3 cited in fraud stay held
Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
FORT SMITH — Three people charged in a multimillion-dollar mail fraud scheme must remain in jail, a federal magistrate ruled Tuesday.
U. S. Magistrate Judge James Marschewski ordered Sharon Jeanette Henningsen and Timothy Shawn Donavan, both of Rudy in Crawford County, and Alys Marie Dimmitt of Muldrow, Okla., jailed because they violated the conditions of bonds set for them in August.
He also said he believed it unlikely that the three would adhere to bond conditions if released again.
A federal criminal complaint filed in August charges the three with aiding and abetting mail fraud. They were released on $ 25, 000 signature bonds. Marschewski issued an arrest warrant Dec. 7 after probation officer Terry Ray reported the three failed to call his office weekly as required in their bond conditions.
They were arrested Dec. 8 and are being held in the Sebastian County jail.
The complaint alleges that Henningsen, Donavan and Dimmitt participated in a scheme to collect application fees from people wanting to stuff envelopes for one of two businesses they operated, Trail Head Options or Premier Solutions.
The U. S. Postal Service received several complaints from applicants who said they received none of their work supplies from the company after paying their application fees, according to an affidavit attached to the complaint from postal inspectors.
Henningsen was fined $ 1. 2 million in Pulaski County Circuit Court in April in an envelope-stuffing scam after a judge ruled she violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Before making his ruling Tuesday, Marschewski granted requests by all three defendants to dismiss their attorneys and to allow them to represent themselves.
The three attorneys had filed requests to withdraw be- cause either their clients did not want representation or because they would not cooperate in the preparation of their defense.
Donavan, representing himself, told Marschewski that he and the U. S. government were an artificial entity and that the magistrate had no authority over Donavan because he was a not an artificial entity.
“You have no power over me,” Donavan told Marschewski. “I am a living, breathing, free man of the Earth.” Henningsen, Donavan and Dimmitt have filed several documents with Marschewski’s office stating they were not U. S. citizens over which the government and the courts had authority.
Henningsen told Marschewski on Tuesday that he and the government owed the three defendants $ 5 billion for defaulting on a promissory note they signed last month and which they claimed satisfied their bail bond and the criminal case against them.
“The law recognizes promissory notes and greenbacks as legal tender,” she said.
The note, included in a batch of papers filed with Marschewski, said the government had three days from receipt of the note to drop the case against them or be liable for the value of the note.
The note listed as payees, U. S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Marschewski, chief assistant U. S. attorney Bill Cromwell and clerk of the court for Western Arkansas Chris Johnson. Cromwell represented the government at Tuesday’s hearing.
Cromwell objected to the arguments presented by Henningsen, Donavan and Dimmitt, saying he had no intention to allow “these misguided people” to read their beliefs into the hearing record or to use the hearing as a platform for the expression of their beliefs.
Marschewski said he had not read the documents the three filed and that they were not pertinent to the purpose of Tuesday’s hearing.
According to the documents the three presented, the promissory note was a “negotiable instrument” that would be paid to the government through Henningsen’s, Donavan’s and Dimmitt’s Social Security accounts to terminate any liability they had in the government’s criminal case against them.
A letter in the stack of documents claimed the $ 5 billion disappeared from the U. S. Treasury and blamed the disappearance on Paulson, Marschewski, Cromwell and Johnson.
Another document, entitled “Schedule D: Default confessions, stipulations and admissions,” said the United States was a corporate body politic without geographic borders.
That paper also said the defendants were foreign to the United States and that any legal action against them by the government was the equivalent of enslaving them.
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