By Tammy Joyner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Federal authorities are seeing an increase in the number of foreclosed and unoccupied homes in metro Atlanta being seized by members of an anti-government group.
“I’m not sure I can connect it with the economy, but we’ve seen a surge of these in the last year, in particular,” Stephen Emmett, special agent in the Atlanta field office of the FBI, said recently. Emmett said federal and local authorities increasingly are running into confrontations with members of a sect known as “sovereign citizens.”
“They’re expanding throughout the metro Atlanta area,” Emmett said. “DeKalb has had their fair share of problems with them and now Clayton.”
Clayton County SWAT officers were recently called to a foreclosed home near Riverdale where a couple had been living illegally. SWAT members surrounded the house after getting reports the people inside had threatened violence against anyone who approached. Gideon Israel and his wife, Deborah, had been living illegally in the bank-owned, gray stucco house on Stimson Way near Riverdale in the northwest part of Clayton County for a while and had submitted reams of fraudulent paperwork to county officials to try to block the eviction, according to Maj. Jeff Mitchell, who heads the enforcement division for the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office.
The Israels were not charged and left without incident. Shortly after, cleanup crews for the bank put furniture and other belongings on the lawn and boarded up the house.
Mitchell said the Riverdale couple is believed to part of the sovereign citizen sect. County law enforcement had a similar incident a month ago of a man living in a home who claimed to be a member of the sect. Last year county police stopped a man claiming to be a sovereign citizen and found more than $300 billion in fake bonds in his car.
“We’re trying to identify other sovereign citizen cases in the county,” Mitchell said, noting local law enforcement is working with the FBI to target group members.
Group members don’t believe courts have jurisdiction over them. They don’t believe in paying taxes or having driver’s licenses or car tags. They don’t believe banks can own land.
They do, however, believe abandoned properties are ripe for the taking. They often use quit-claim deeds to take over properties and as soon as they move in post “no trespassing” signs.
The group uses YouTube to educate the public about their philosophy and recruit new members.
Authorities say the sect has taken over 20 metro Atlanta properties, including a $1 million home in south DeKalb County seized last year.
The FBI has listed Sovereign Citizens as a domestic terrorist organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which also tracks the group, estimates the sect numbers more than 300,000 nationwide in such places as Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia.
Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution