Monthly Archives: July 2024

Sovereign citizens (and the like-minded) generally believe in what is termed the “Redemption(ist) Theory.” This belief holds that there exists, somewhere in the “government,” a massive trust fund in the “all-capital-letters” name (sometimes called the “Strawman”) of every person.¹ If this supposed trust can be accessed (so goes the mythology) it can be “redeemed” and used to pay debts, and even purchase items like automobiles. Internet “gurus” on YouTube and other platforms sell the promise of this “redemption.” ²

Below is an extract from a current case, debunking the Redemption Theory from the legal POV. Oddly, a YouTube “sovereign citizen” guru, despite not being admitted to the bar, is seemingly trying to, in some sense, to represent the credulous debtor farmer³ (“Plaintiff”), who is suing a Texas lending co-op, in Federal court. Here is part of the well-documented defendant’s motion to dismiss:
“Plaintiff’s claims appear to rely on fictional legal instruments and frivolous theories that have been held to be completely unfounded and frivolous under decades of federal precedent and law. See Hennis v. Trustmark Bank, No. 2:10CV20-KS-MTP, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45759, at *9 (S.D. Miss. 2010) and the cases cited therein. Claims that debts have been paid under the redemption theory by issuance of bills of exchange or other similar instrument have likewise been dismissed as frivolous. See id. at *16-*18 (citing Bryant v. Washington Mutual Bank, 524 F. Supp. 2d 753, 760 (W.D. Va. 2007) (thoroughly discussing the “revisionist legal history and conspiracy theory” basis of claims that debtors may issue a bill of exchange requiring the United States to pay their debts to third parties out of secretly held trust accounts for each citizen and dismissing plaintiff’s claims as “clearly nonsense in almost every detail”); Santarose v. Aurora Bank FSB, No. H-10-720, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53708, 2020 WL 2232819, at *2-3 (S.D. Tex. June 2, 2010) (“Plaintiffs have provided no viable legal authority or any reliable or probative factual support to buttress their dubious bill of exchange theory.”); Mould v. Saxon Mortg. Servs., Inc., 2005 WL 1950268 at *2 (W.D. Wash.) (Aug. 12, 2005) (dismissing claim that plaintiffs’ debt was discharged by offering bill of exchange for failure to state a claim); McElroy v. Chase Manhattan Mortg. Corp., 134 Cal. App.4th 388, 393, 36 Cal. Rptr. 3d 176 (Cal. App. 4 Dist. 2005) (“we unhesitatingly conclude the Bill is a worthless piece of paper, consisting of nothing more than a string of words that sound as though they belong in a legal document, but which, in reality, are incomprehensible, signifying nothing.”); Hesed-El v. Aldridge Pite, LLP, No. 20-14782, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 34976, at *10 (11th Cir. 2021) (finding “the ‘bill of exchange’ quite plainly is not real money.”). See also McLaughlin v. CitiMortgage, Inc., 726 F. Supp. 2d 201, 209 (D. Conn. 2010), which discusses in detail the “Redemptionist” theory; the “vapor money” theory; and the “unlawful money” theory, and finds that if the plaintiff’s claims “are premised on one or more of the above-described theories, that fact alone would be sufficient to grant [Defendant’s] Motion to Dismiss, as all three of these theories have been universally and emphatically rejected by numerous federal courts for at least the last 25 years.”

1. The history of the Strawman concept is told at Wikipedia. Supposedly the U.S. government went bankrupt when it abandoned the gold standard in 1933 and began using citizens as collateral in trade agreements with foreign governments, with the value of a citizen’s earnings potential supposedly constituting the monetary worth of the collateral. How and where this could have become a bank account or trust is anyone’s guess, and each guru gives it a shot.  ↩︎ ↩︎
2. footnote 1 lists some nine different “redemption” methods promoted by “gurus”, none of which has proved successful in tapping the Strawman. Some attempts are farcical, and some have resulted in jail time, for fraud. ↩︎
3. farmers seem to have been in the forefront of the Redemption movement. As I recall, they also bought a lot of lightning rods. ↩︎