Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor "kits," collections of pseudolegal tactics sold to participants despite a complete lack of any actual legal basis.
[9] The redemption movement is an offshoot of the Posse Comitatus,[10] an American far right organization which was established in 1969 by leaders of the white supremacist Christian Identity sect.
The Posse's beliefs were rooted in antisemitism and they saw income tax, debt-based currency and debt collection as tools of Jewish control of the United States.
[15] Elvick sold a book, The Redemption Package, that encouraged people to claim large refunds and information rewards from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and then pay their debts with "sight drafts" (worthless checks) issued by his own company, Common Title Bond & Trust.
[16] By the late 1990s, the belief in the existence of a secret bank account, attached to each individual and containing large sums of money, had become a fixture of redemption schemes.
An appeals court upheld the dismissal, agreeing that "Plaintiff's birth certificate did not create a charitable trust" and that the case was a "slam-dunk frivolous complaint".
[3] The theory also gives a specific role to the Uniform Commercial Code, which provides an interstate standard for documents such as driver's licenses or for bank accounts.
They have been used and adapted in the United States, Canada and other English-speaking countries, by many tax protesters or conspiracy theorists, and more broadly by people seeking a remedy for their financial stresses or willing to fight what they perceive as government oppression.
The most common explanation claims that the United States went bankrupt when it abandoned the gold standard in 1933 and started using its citizens as collateral so that it could borrow money.
[1][24] Supposed procedures for using the nonexistent "strawman" funds include: Promoters may suggest that others have had great success in eliminating their debts through these methods, and put the blame on participants when they do not get the same results.
In a frequently cited 2007 foreclosure case, a debtor attempted to pay her home mortgage with a redemption "bill of exchange" at the suggestion of promoter Barton Buhtz.
A United States District Court concluded that "the legal authorities Plaintiff cites and the facts she alleges suggest that she did not tender payment, but rather a worthless piece of paper.
[54] One key figure of the redemption movement has been Glenn Richard Unger, best known under the alias Sam Kennedy,[52] who hosted the Take No Prisoners program on Republic Broadcasting Network in Round Rock, Texas.
[55] In a mass e-mail early in 2010, Unger vowed to use his show to present a "final remedy to the enslavement at the hands of corporations posing as legitimate government."
[59][60] Winston Shrout, a former construction worker and prominent sovereign citizen and tax protester from Oregon,[61] started practicing redemption schemes in 2000.
Shrout built a following on social media to become a leading redemption promoter,[62] holding seminars in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
[62] At one point, he claimed to be an "Earth delegate to the interdimensional Galactic Round Table" and a "sixth-dimensional interplanetary diplomat" and to have disrupted international transactions by relocating the prime meridian with the assistance of the "Queen of the Fairies".
[66][67] Shrout failed to surrender to authorities at the Federal Bureau of Prisons to begin his sentence and remained a fugitive until November 2019, when he was arrested in Arizona.
[69][70] With several associates, she created a group called the One People’s Public Trust (OPPT) that claimed around 2012 to have "foreclosed" governments, corporations, and banks through US Uniform Commercial Code filings.
[71] One of Tucci-Jarraf's followers, Randall Beane, devised an Internet fraud scheme aimed at extracting from the banking system tens of millions of dollars he believed were part of his secret account.
Tucci-Jarraf was arrested days later in Washington, D.C., after arriving unannounced at the White House's gate to demand a meeting with then-President Donald Trump.