Two Charged in New Cases of Alleged ‘Sovereign’ House Theft in Georgia
Buying a home can cause big headaches and quickly empty your wallet. Just ask an estimated 20 buyers in Atlanta who purchased vacant homes from two antigovernment “sovereign citizens” who are now accused of selling residences they didn’t own.
Edgar Lee Rodgers and Diana Rowe were arrested last week on charges of racketeering and theft-by-deception charges, authorities say.
The alleged house-stealing, still being investigated by the Atlanta Police Department’s fraud unit, is the latest wrinkle in the sovereign-citizen movement, with similar cases cropping up earlier in Georgia and a few other states as well. The government-hating sovereign citizens think most criminal and tax laws don’t apply to them and they can pretty much do whatever they want — apparently including squatting in and selling vacant houses. The FBI recently identified sovereign citizens as a significant “domestic terrorist” threat.
In Atlanta, Rowe and Rodgers, who called himself “Immanuel Hood,” are accused of locating vacant homes, then convincing unsuspecting buyers looking for hot deals to use the state’s adverse possession law to take over vacant homes.
WXIA-TV reported last week that at least 20 people fell for the scheme, losing not only “down payments” ranging from $1,000 to $9,000, but, in some instances, the costs of initial repairs they undertook on houses they thought they were buying.
Many of the homes involved were owned by an international missionary organization, according to various media reports.