Sovereign Citizens Helped Swindle $1B from the Government They Disavow

By the 1970s, the intellectual father of the sovereign citizen movement, William Potter Gale, helped spread this type of falsehood to a larger audience. The founder of the antigovernment group Posse Comitatus, Mr. Gale aligned himself with an emerging movement of tax protesters who argued, for instance, that paying taxes was a form of involuntary servitude. One way sovereigns try to make the imaginary money real is by abusing legitimate I.R.S. forms.

Source: www.nytimes.com