Gravatt v. United States

100 Fed. Cl. 279, 2011 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1950, 2011 WL 4467770
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedSeptember 27, 2011
DocketNo. 11-592C
StatusPublished
Cited by94 cases

This text of 100 Fed. Cl. 279 (Gravatt v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Gravatt v. United States, 100 Fed. Cl. 279, 2011 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1950, 2011 WL 4467770 (uscfc 2011).

Opinion

ORDER OF DISMISSAL

SWEENEY, Judge.

Plaintiff Brandon Shane Gravatt, a federal prisoner appearing pro se, alleges that through a convoluted series of events, the United States was made the trustee of an account created for his benefit and is now required to disburse to him the funds in that account. In support of his claims, plaintiff submits a vast array documents, including Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) financing statements, tax forms, correspondence with two federal district courts and various federal employees, notarized letters and affidavits, and his birth certificate. The court finds that summary adjudication is appropriate in this matter and dismisses plaintiffs complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The court further finds plaintiffs complaint to be frivolous.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Sovereign Citizen Movement

Plaintiffs complaint and the attached materials reflect that plaintiff adheres to the belief that even though he was born and resides in the United States, he is his own sovereign and is therefore not a United States citizen. This belief is the hallmark of the sovereign citizen movement.1 So-called sovereign citizens believe that they are not subject to government authority and employ various tactics in an attempt to, among other things, avoid paying taxes, extinguish debts, and derail criminal proceedings. See, e.g., Brown v. United States, 105 F.3d 621 (Fed.Cir.1997) (describing an attempt to avoid payment of federal income taxes); United States v. Schneider, 910 F.2d 1569 (7th Cir.1990) (describing an attempt to present a defense in a criminal trial); Bryant v. Wash. Mut. Bank, 524 F.Supp.2d 753 (W.D.Va.2007) (describing an attempt to satisfy a mortgage).

The goal of some sovereign citizens is the recovery of money from the United States that they actually — in the form of taxes — or purportedly paid to the government. See, e.g., Ambort v. United States, 392 F.3d 1138 (10th Cir.2004) (describing attempts to obtain a refund of federal income taxes); Troxelle v. United States, No. 10-312C, 2010 WL 3982349 (Fed.Cl. Oct. 6, 2010) (unpublished opinion) (describing the plaintiffs allegations that the issuance of his birth certificate and social security number created debts that the government was required to repay to him).

[283]*283As the Honorable Norman K. Moon explained, such claims are premised upon the following beliefs:

Supposedly, prior to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, there were no U.S. citizens; instead, people were citizens only of their individual states. Even after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. citizenship remains optional. The federal government, however, has tricked the populace into becoming U.S. citizens by entering into “contracts” embodied in such documents as birth certificates and social security cards. With these contracts, an individual unwittingly creates a fictitious entity (i.e., the U.S. citizen) that represents, but is separate from, the real person. Through these contracts, individuals also unknowingly pledge themselves and their property, through their newly created fictitious entities, as security for the national debt in exchange for the benefits of citizenship. However, the government cannot hold the profits it makes from this use of its citizens and their property in the general fund of the United States because doing so would constitute fraud, given that the profits technically belong to the actual owners of the property being pledged (i.e., the real people represented by the fictitious entities). Therefore, the government holds the profits in secret, individual trust accounts, one for each citizen.
Because the populace is unaware that their birth certificates and such are actually contracts with the government, these contracts are fraudulent. As a result, the officers of government are liable for treason unless they provide a remedy that allows an individual to recover what she is owed — namely, the profits held in her trust account, which the government has made from its use of her and her property in the commercial markets. In 1933, the government provided just such a remedy with House Joint Resolution 192, and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) provides the means for a person to implement it. The fact that virtually no one is aware of this remedy or how to use it is all part of the government’s scheme — if no one takes advantage of the remedy, the government can keep the money, so it is in the government’s interest that the remedy be obscure.

Bryant, 524 F.Supp.2d at 758-59 (footnotes omitted); see also id. at 758 n. 8 (“Further thickening the plot, the name of the fictitious entity is the real person’s name in all-capital letters, which apparently explains why names are commonly written in all-capital letters on birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other government documents.”). To collect the money held by the United States in the “secret, individual trust accounts,” sovereign citizens employ the process known as “redemption.” Id. at 759. In this process, sovereign citizens file one or more UCC financing statements naming themselves as both the secured party and the debtor, with the intent “to register a security interest in the fictitious entity that was created by [their] birth certificate and other government documents ----”2 Id. Typically, the secured party’s name is written using only initial capital letters and the debtor’s name is written in all capital letters. Id. at 759 & n. 11; United States v. Beeman, No. 1:10-cv-237-SJM, 2011 WL 2601959, at *11 (W.D.Pa. June 30, 2011).

B. Plaintiffs Factual Allegations

The series of events that forms the basis of plaintiffs complaint closely tracks the scheme described above.3 Plaintiff alleges that his birth certificate is evidence of a trust for which he was both the grantor and the [284]*284beneficiary and that his social security number is evidence of a contract under which the United States has borrowed money from him. He contends that the Secretary of the Treasury, as trustee, held the funds borrowed from him in a “National Registry/Trust Account” and, as bailee, accepted a bond from the trust. Plaintiff states that the trust account was used to issue United States Treasury Bonds and Notes and that the funds in the trust account were paid into the court and later deposited in the United States Treasury.

In 2008, plaintiff filed a UCC financing statement with the California Secretary of State naming “Brandon Shane; Gra-vatt(e)1995” as the secured party and “BRANDON SHANE GRAVATT(e)1995” as the debtor, along with several documents pm-porting to establish that “Brandon Shane; Gravatt(c)1995” was a sovereign citizen and not a citizen of the United States.

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100 Fed. Cl. 279, 2011 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1950, 2011 WL 4467770, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gravatt-v-united-states-uscfc-2011.