In 2014, Raymond McLaughlin filed documents with the IRS which said that he paid more than $300,000 to a state court judge handling a foreclosure case against him, in an attempt to “to bait the IRS into penalizing and assessing additional tax obligations on the state judge on the grounds that the judge never reported such income.”
McLaughlin was charged with making false statements (18 USC 1001) and convicted after a jury trial. During that trial and again on appeal, he claimed to be a “sovereign citizen” and therefore not subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. In an attempt to “deter future litigants from making similar claims,” the Second Circuit issued a short but published opinion rejecting the argument.
[NARRATOR: This would not, however, deter future litigants from making similar claims]
Quite simply, “personal jurisdiction exists whenever an individual, charged with a crime over which the Federal court has subject matter jurisdiction, is brought before that court,” because “[a] defendant need not acquiesce in or submit to the court’s jurisdiction or actually participate in the proceedings in order for the court to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.”