Crackpot Gets Seven Years For Targeting Chicago U.S. Attorney, Other Feds With Billion$ In Bogus Retaliatory Liens Filed Against Their Property; Judge Declares All Illegally Filed Paperwork Null & Void

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Fairview Heights, Illinois):

• After nearly two years, the federal prosecution of Cherron Marie Phillips, a/k/a “River Tali,” ended yesterday with Phillips being sentenced to a seven year prison term, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced [].
  
  Phillips, a 43 year old Chicago native, was indicted back in November 2012 with knowingly filing false maritime liens against the property of a dozen current and former federal employees, including former United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, in retaliation for their involvement in the investigation and prosecution of her brother, Devon Phillips. A jury in Chicago convicted her on 10 of 12 counts in June of this year.
  
  During the trial, the government presented evidence that from 2006 to 2011, Phillips’s brother, Devon Phillips, had been investigated and prosecuted in the Northern District of Illinois for trafficking cocaine. Cherron Phillips regularly attended his court proceedings and filed documents in the record objecting to the jurisdiction of the court. She filed the liens – each in the amount of $100 billion – in the spring of 2011, several weeks after her brother was sentenced.(1) The existence of the liens wasn’t discovered until later that summer, when one of the victims was attempting a real estate transaction.
  
  
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  In a written memorandum he filed before sentencing, Judge Reagan noted that Phillips subscribes to the “sovereign citizen” ideology – a belief that the government is operating outside its jurisdiction and that by taking certain prescribed steps, citizens can live in this country without abiding by its laws. It was these “misguided beliefs” and “tortured logic,” he wrote, that formed the basis for her crimes. During the sentencing hearing, Phillips read aloud from a prepared statement and claimed the court did not have jurisdiction over her, prompting Judge Reagan to observe that even now, “she simply doesn’t get it.”
  
  
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  On a motion from the United States, the court also signed an order from the bench declaring the liens null and void, releasing them, and ordering that they be afforded “no legal force or effect whatsoever.” That order and a copy of the final judgment will be recorded in the public record in Cook County, Illinois, where the liens were originally filed.

For the U.S. Attorney press release, see Sovereign Citizen Who Retaliated Against Federal Officials By Filing False Liens Sentenced To Seven Years In Prison.

(1) See generally,

• The New York Times: In Paper War, Flood of Liens Is the Weapon,
• National Association of Secretaries of State: State Strategies to Subvert Fraudulent Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Filings (A Report for State Business Filing Agencies).