Freemen-on-the-Land (FMotL) -

[Le Bateleur]

Freemen-on-the-Land covers a diverse group of people who essentially believe that knowledge of certain obscure legal principles allow one to opt out of paying taxes and following laws, write off debts, and possibly claim millions from the government.

Wikipedia has an article about FMotL here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land

What makes FMotLers lulzy is how hard their arguments can fail in court or faced with the police.

In some cases, particularly involving commercial debts, using FMotL arguments can sometimes convince the other party that you are too much hassle to pursue.

In other cases, FMotLers have been fined, had their cars confiscated or been jailed...and made themselves look ridiculous in the process. One particularly laughable practice of the Freemen is their obsession with maritime law and terminology.

 

[Arctic]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land Aren't those the people who call themself "[First name] of the family [Last name]" and believe that they only need to follow the laws they agree with?

 

[Le Bateleur]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman_on_the_land Aren't those the people who call themself "[First name] of the family [Last name" and believe that they only need to follow the laws they agree with?

Yep. That's them.

Here's a Freeman called Dave, out for his first drive after removing his licence plates and canceling his insurance. The Jerkops pull Dave over, but he has a plan.

Spoiler

Dave's plan works so well that he gets arrested and his car gets impounded. Does he get it back via the power of FMotLing?

Spoiler

Nope

 

[ATM]

Gotta give Dave full points for audacity, at the very least.

"It's not a vehicle."

 

[Arctic]

RationalWiki has an entire list of people who hilariously try to use FMoTL lingo in a real courthouse.
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/norwich_court_case_posted_on_youtube_1_751533

 

[Le Bateleur]

Among the more colourful FMotLers is David Wynn Miller.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wynn_Miller

Claiming to have an IQ of 200 and to be King if Hawaii, he has invented his own mangling of the English language that he calls "Quantum Grammar".

His website rivals Timecube in terms of raw schizophrenia.

http://dwmlc.com/

Below is a sample of the kind of rambling that people have actually tried using in court.

Spoiler: I cut this after 4 points but it goes up to 42

*FOR THE FILING OF A LAW-SUITE IS WITH THE CLAIM OF THE DOCUMENT-CONTRACT-POSTAL-VESSEL-COURT WITH THE CONTRACT-PAPER-DOCUMENT-COURT-RULES AND: CAUSES BY THE CLAIMANT. "FOR THE VOID OF THE FOREIGN-VESSEL-COURT IS WITHIN THE DRY-DOCK"(*
:FOR THIS David-Wynn: Miller OF THESE CHANGES IS WITH THE CLAIM OF THE SYNTAX-LANGUAGE-CORRECTIONS.
CLAIMANT'S-NAME
FOR THE CORPORATION-CASE-NUMBER: CV-11-00123456(JUDGE)
WITH THE POSTAL-REGISTRATION-NUMBER~RG 123 456 789 US
FOR THE CLAIM OF THE CORRECTION OF THE PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR-CLAIMS *FOR THE REGISTRATION-CASE: 123 456 789 US MAIL.**
VERSUS-CONTEST
WITH THE VASSALEES
NOTE-ABBREVIATION-TERMS: D.-C.-C.-S. = DOCUMENT-CONTRACT-CLAIMS-SECTION. ~1 FOR THIS CORPORATION-CONTRACT-CLAIM-VESSEL OF THESE VASSALEES ARE WITH THE CONTRACT-STATE-VESSEL OF THE CORRECT-SENTENCE-STRUCTURE-COMMUNICATION-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR-TERMS WITH THIS CONTRACT-VESSEL OF THIS CORPORATION-CASE.
~2 FOR THE TERMS OF THIS C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G.-CONTRACT ARE WITH THE CLAIM OF THE "RULES OF AN EVIDENCE" WITHIN THE C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G.-FLAG OF THE CONTRACT-STATES-VESSEL WITH THE C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G.-OATH-FACT-CLAIM WITH THE PUBLICATION OF THE FIDUCIARY-COURT-TERMS-CONTRACT WITH THE CONTRACT-STATES-CORPORATION-VESSEL.
~3 FOR THE JURISDICTION OF THE COURT IS WITH THE FLAG-CLAIM OF THIS CORPORATION-CASE WITH THE DOCUMENT-CONTRACT-POSTAL-VESSEL-COURT BY THE FILING-CLERK OF THE DOCUMENT-CONTRACT-COURT'S-CORPORATION-CASE.
~4 FOR THE JURISDICTION OF THE C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G.-FLAG IS WITH THE PERSONS'-CONTRACT OF THIS CASE.

 

[Artard]

This was one of the last scams that Casey Serin got into while the Caseypedia was still up. As a guy that lost 7 houses to foreclosure before the age of 25, he was kind of their ideal mark.

There is some seriously weird shit in there. One I remember is that they believed the government created a "bank account" when you were born, called a "strawman". By writing the correct documents (a UCC-1 voucher - you can look this shit up, it's completely uninteresting and after having explained it to you, you would just shrug) with the correct stamps ("Accepted For Value") at the correct angle (45 degrees appears to invoke the magic) in the right color (non-black! Purple stands for the blood of kings but red is also acceptable!) you could simply send them a letter and they'd deduct your taxes from this "strawman" bank account.

Everything in the preceding paragraph represents things these people actually do. They send these documents to the IRS, local tax authorities, sometimes commercial lenders.

Not linking because these dudes are insane but here's one of them attempting to explain their moonrunes in normal people language:

The instrument that was used was given by the government (company) as the collateral to secure the debt they had with the bankers. You can redeem and regain control of that instrument by filing a UCC-1 financing statement with the Secretary of State in your state and listing your birth certificate as your “property” or collateral.

By filling out the SS-5 “Application for Social Security Benefits” you entered into another contract that allowed the government/company to access the prepaid account that was created with the passage of House Joint Resolution 192.

This bailout is for you. It was passed 75 years ago. This kind of news takes a while to get around, especially when the corporate government and corporate business likes the arrangement with you and me remaining ignorant.

You can access your account at the U.S. Treasury to eliminate debts and get a refund of all of the income taxes you paid for the last three years by filing 1040’s, corrected IRS docs that we will submit electronically. You can learn how to call upon the Secretary of the Treasury to do his job: to eliminate debt you incurred by simply adjusting to zero the accounts that you incur in the normal course of doing business with your creditors. That means car payments, credit cards, utilities, taxes, student loans, house payments…. YES all of them. Eliminate debt with your prepaid account at the US Treasury. Do it while there still IS an Internal Revenue Service and a US Treasury.

See? If you bothered reading all that, you almost certainly shrugged.

 

[sasazuka]

One particularly laughable practice of the Freemen is their obsession with maritime law and terminology.

King of the Hill sort of spoofed that obsession in the season 2 episode "Jumpin' Crack Bass", where Hank goes to court for buying crack that he thought was fishing bait and Dale Gribble refuses to take his hat off in court when asked to do so by the judge because of the fringes on the flag. Dale starts to give a lecture on Admiralty Law before the bailiff gags him

Spoiler

The relevant scene starts at 0:17:05