False Lien

A false lien is a document that purports to create a lien but has no legal basis, or that rests on false, fictitious or fraudulent statements, and in the United States it has been used as a tool of harassment and revenge, a practice sometimes called paper terrorism, especially against government officials and judges. The tactic was pioneered by the Posse Comitatus movement: a filer falsely claims that the target owes money for goods or services never provided, and because filing a lien is inexpensive and easy while dissolving one requires significant time and legal fees, the false claim itself becomes the harassment. In a documented 1992 example, a Seattle resident and his wife filed a false lien for over sixty two thousand dollars against General Electric over wages garnished for unpaid taxes, then filed further false liens against President George H. W. Bush, a United States senator, the Attorney General of Washington, GE's chief executive, and several IRS agents and their spouses, litigation that took years to resolve before the couple was barred from filing further liens against federal employees. In response, the United States Congress criminalized the filing of false liens against government officials, and the federal Sentencing Guidelines now treat filing a false lien against an official as seriously as threatening that official directly, while the Bureau of Prisons treats lien documents and personal information such as Social Security numbers as contraband in federal prisons.