against the FBI. No body was killed, but the standoff lasted weeks and tore the community apart. The local county (and only) attorney worked with the feds and talked them into trying some obscure federal laws to finally convict the ringleaders who instigated local fools into thinking they were 'sovereign' and didn't have to abide by actual laws.
The seminars went beyond tax avoidance and into actual fraud. They 'taught' groups how they could set up their own (a-hem) banking systems, complete with accounts and 'warrants' instead of checks. They would teach people to use these made up financial instruments to over pay court ordered payments such as fines and child support, assuring that the governing agency would have to refund over payments in actual money. What a scheme, huh? Some of the 'sovereign' citizens used their pretend checking accounts to pay local businesses for products/services. That did not go well with their neighbors and increased risks of violence in the community.
Beyond the Sovereign Citizen bullshit, we are still dealing with the 'Constitutional Sheriff' malarky in many rural counties. This is the hokum that law enforcement administrators (AKA elected sheriffs) are the final arbitrators on what laws can and can't be enforced in 'their' counties. These bozos actually insist they, not the legislatures, not the courts, decide what is and isn't legal. They advocate that federal and state laws basically stop at their county lines. My guess is most of them are protecting, or running, local crime syndicates, prostitution, drug manufacturing and trafficking, etc, and think they have magic powers that stop enforcement of state and federal laws at their county lines. This is the sort of thinking that will result in more standoffs and probably some deaths.
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