Local Freemen Disciple’s Fraud Trial Opens

As she went on trial for fraud and money laundering, Freemen disciple M. Elizabeth Broderick told jurors Wednesday that the federal government, not she, was running a scam on the American people.

But a federal prosecutor insisted he will prove that Broderick, 53, of Palmdale, and two co-defendants carried out a “massive,” $800-million check fraud scheme.

The scam was hatched after Broderick attended a 1995 seminar by Montana Freemen leader Leroy Schweitzer, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Aaron Dyer.

If the opening statements are any indication, the jury’s key task in the complex, monthlong fraud case will be determining the line between dogma and duplicity.

The Freemen and other members of the so-called Patriot movement believe the federal government is illegal and has no power over them once they renounce their citizenship. They also assert that paper money issued by the government is worthless.

Broderick has refused to acknowledge the court’s jurisdiction over her or the role of U.S. District Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian. Nonetheless, she is acting as her own lawyer.

On Wednesday, she gave jurors an ample serving of anti-government ideology in her convoluted opening statement. She said the trial will expose government fraud, “a sad story to tell about a beautiful country.”

As she pointed to charts she had prepared while in custody without bail, Broderick spoke animatedly and her remarks seemed to adopt the tone of the many seminars she held promoting the use of her homemade checks. Often, she addressed spectators in the crowded courtroom, some of whom nodded in agreement as Broderick made her points.

The seminars, held in the Antelope Valley as well as San Bernardino and Orange counties, drew as many as 600 people at a time, each paying up to $200 to learn how to pay off debts. Broderick, however, would not accept the “checks” she had issued as payment for her seminars, according to authorities.

“You are slaves to the system,” Broderick told jurors. “You know that little green thing in your pockets? That’s a federal reserve note. It’s a debt. . . . When you go into a vault at the bank, do you see any money? No. You see thin air. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

In essence, she said, the federal government went bankrupt in 1933 and has been defrauding citizens ever since. There is no money--just credit and debt, she said. And, she added, the federal government owes her billions in liens as well as a $9,600 tax refund.

“I’m proud to be the lien queen,” she said. “My laws are perfect. They’re so perfect, they can’t stand them,” she added, pointing at the FBI and IRS agents among the spectators. Her checks are backed by her liens, Broderick maintained, and therefore are just as good as the government’s own.

Dyer told jurors that the government will prove that Broderick and two co-defendants--Barry Switzer of Canyon Country and Julian Cheney, a Reseda chiropractor--conspired to issue about 8,000 bogus government checks to dupe creditors and profit themselves. Broderick also is accused of trying to launder the money by setting up phony foundations and hiding it in bank accounts under other people’s names.

Dyer pointed to an enlarged image of one of the hundreds of so-called comptroller’s warrants that Broderick wrote against the federal government, saying, “Nothing about this check is legitimate. This is something that was made up.”

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The check, made out to co-defendant Switzer for $650,000, looks official, right down to the images of the American flag and Statue of Liberty and the bar code printed on it.

“There is no such thing as a comptroller’s warrant,” Dyer said. “The flag, the Statue of Liberty--they’re just decorations. The only thing these checks were drawn on were the computers of M. Elizabeth Broderick.”

But Broderick, insisting she had enforceable liens against the federal government to back up her checks, told jurors: “I’m not going to back down from these people. They’re going to pay them.”

Defense attorneys for Switzer and Cheney painted the co-defendants as “true believers” of Broderick’s who never intended to deceive anyone.

Phil Deitch, representing Switzer, said his client believed the checks had “commercial validity.” He portrayed Switzer, a fundamentalist Christian and family man who attended a 1985 Freemen seminar in Montana, as a victim of the anti-government philosophies he was taught.

The lawyer said jurors will have to decide whether Switzer, who ran an insurance business, had an “honest, bona-fide belief” that the checks the defendants issued to people enrolled in the seminars were good.

David Evans, Cheney’s lawyer, said he wasn’t sure he understood the Freemen philosophies, even though he’d invested substantial time studying them in preparation for the trial. He portrayed his client as a simple Idaho “country boy” whom jurors might find “dumb as a brick” and “stubborn as a mule.”

Cheney’s life began to unravel, his lawyer said, when he moved to California and bought a chiropractic practice that was worth less than he paid for it. Eventually, he got in trouble with back taxes and the IRS. The experience made him susceptible to the teachings of the Freemen, Evans said.

After the IRS seized two of his bank accounts, Cheney filed liens against the agents and against a federal judge. But, his lawyer said, fraud was not his intention.

“As if he were standing in a field with his middle finger raised, he fired off liens to the federal judge and all the IRS agents,” Evans said. “He had just had it. He was telling those people to stick it, please let me be, let me be free.”