the PRIVATE BANK of DENNY RAY HARDIN

[spectre]

http://spectrevision.net/2012/03/16/the-private-bank-of-denny-ray-hardin/

NOT a 'REAL' BANK
http://gawker.com/5840953/the-private-bank-of-denny-ray-hardin-wasnt-a-real-bank

After reading some books about banking, Denny Ray Hardin set up a
website, created 2,000 fake promissory notes, and opened up "the
Private Bank of Denny Ray Hardin" (not necessarily in that order) from
his home in Kansas City. How entrepreneurial! And illegal. On his
website—sorry, the Private Bank's website—Hardin claimed that the
notes, which he made on his home computer, were bonded and authorized
by the U.S. Treasury Department. From September 2008 to September 2009
he sold more than $100 million of these things, reports the Kansas
City Star.

In a March 2010 profile by the Kansas City alt-weekly The Pitch,
Hardin comes off as a tragic and complicated character who has some
altruistic motives but is also driven by extremist "don't tread on me"
ideology. Fittingly, the article introduces him by way of a his many
life troubles, which seem to have begun when he and his girlfriend
were in a car accident, she lost her ability to work, and he was laid
off from his construction job. "The one good thing we had was Betsy,"
he told The Pitch, referring to his beloved Corvette Stingray. But
then a friend set him up in a small-time marijuana deal, and Hardin
was arrested. The cops confiscated the Corvette, and Hardin was
sentenced to jail time plus probation. Upon his release, he
experienced this horror: "The next time Hardin saw Betsy, almost a
year later, she had been painted up as an ad for the D.A.R.E.
program." Seriously, that's tragic.

Besides seeing his old hot rod being used to promote snitching on your
parents, Hardin faced other troubles. His woman left him. He began
smoking crack. His life essentially fell apart. Then he went to rehab
and read about various subjects, including banking. He applied his
knowledge and opened the Private Bank of Denny Ray Hardin, under this
theory that we don't understand:

Hardin theorizes that it's possible to file a document that renounces
one's U.S. citizenship and instead declares what he refers to as
American citizenship. By doing this, the newly declared American
citizen can take possession of an account that is supposedly set up by
the feds on the occasion of every person's birth. Next, the American
citizen can file a financial statement with the U.S. Secretary of
State and copyright his or her name. The Americans Republic Party
explains that with these three simple steps, it's possible to become a
sovereign with the right to cash checks from one's established-at-
birth account.

Hardin didn't really charge people much of a fee to his customers,
whose mortgages he paid off using his special-issued Denny Ray bonds
(for more on how this works, see this LA Timesarticle). Like an
official bank, he gave his customers information packets describing
"all the steps he had taken, what laws he had to abide by, the
ordinances that must be followed." And, as The Pitch notes, he was
just one banker in a small yet diverse niche market; the Gadsden flag-
flyingAmericans Republic Party, which has supported Hardin over the
years, knows of other private banks operating right here in America.

On Wednesday, Hardin was found guilty in federal court on 11 counts of
creating fictitious obligations and 10 counts of mail fraud, reports
the Kansas City Business Journal; he now faces at least 20 years in
prison. At the time of his indictment in May 2010, he was already
incarcerated in state prison on a probation violation based on a 2006
incident in which he tried to arrest the lieutenant governor of Kansas
for violating the Constitution. The government did not agree with
Hardin about the lieutenant governor' behavior. Hardin and the
government are rarely in agreement on the issues, it seems.

It's amazing that people would do business with a bank named after
some random guy. Then again, people do business with all kinds of
banks. At least this can be said about the now-shuttered Private Bank
of Denny Ray Hardin: it was probably one of the only banks in Kansas
City that was helping people to avoid foreclosure instead of making
foreclosure more likely.

NEVER ASKED for the MONEY BACK
http://www.pitch.com/gyrobase/denny-hardins-weapon-against-the-us-government-his-own-private-bank/Content?oid=2197865&showFullText=true

Denny Hardin's weapon against the U.S. government: his own private
bank
by Peter Rugg / March 11, 2010

It started over a cherry 1977 Corvette named Betsy. "Ever since they
took that car, the fight's been on," Denny Hardin says. He's talking
to The Pitch by phone from the Moberly Correctional Center, where he's
serving the first months of a five-year sentence for a probation
violation. By "they," he means the United States of America. Hardin
didn't plan to wage a one-man war against the government. He was once
a loyal citizen; he even served in the Navy in the 1980s. By 1991, he
was in his late 20s, divorced from the wife he'd met in Tokyo, and
back in his hometown of Kansas City. He began dating a hairdresser
named Sherry Lee, who wanted to open her own salon. They found a space
and started work on it, sleeping on the floor of the shop when they
didn't have enough money to also rent an apartment. But then they were
in a car accident. The insurance company paid out $20,000 for medical
bills and the cost of the car. They spent $7,780 on Betsy. Hardin
found the car on the lot of a Raytown Chevrolet dealer. It was in such
pristine condition that it was just a thousand dollars less than the
original sticker price. A '77 Stingray is one of the most popular
Corvette models ever made, the type of car that bikini-wearing models
still recline against on the covers of muscle-car magazines. The rest
of the money went to medical bills, but Lee couldn't work. Her hands,
which she had relied on to style hair, now shook uncontrollably. "Then
I got laid off from my construction job," Hardin remembers. "The one
good thing we had was Betsy." For the next few months, money was
scarce. One day, a friend of Hardin's from grade school asked if
Hardin could help him find some weed. His friend promised that Hardin
would make a couple of bucks for setting up the deal. When they got to
the dealer's house, the friend feigned shyness, telling Hardin that
because the dealer didn't know him, it was better that he stay in the
car while Hardin bought the dope. Hardin went in and bought a half-
pound of pot. When he came back out, police arrested him. "It turned
out, that friend had been busted by the cops earlier, and he set me up
because he'd made a deal with them to deliver people," Hardin says. He
served 120 days and got five years' probation. Even worse, the cops
claimed that the Stingray had been bought with drug money, so they
confiscated it. The next time Hardin saw Betsy, almost a year later,
she had been painted up as an ad for the D.A.R.E. program.

Lee eventually left him. He knows that she's in Iowa somewhere,
working as a paralegal, but they haven't spoken in years. "When they
took Betsy away, that just about destroyed her. Betsy was repayment
for almost dying," he says. "I promised her I'd make up for what they
did, and I still keep that promise." He didn't start right away.
Hardin spent the next few years in a crack-smoking stupor, dropping
down to 87 pounds before checking himself into a hospital for rehab.
As he convalesced, he read history and law books. Eventually, the man
who was still three credits short of his associate's degree at
Longview Community College was offering legal advice to friends and
family. Before long, he learned how to make his own bank.

The Private Bank of Denny Hardin, responsible for writing more than
$160 million in bonded promissory notes to borrowers all around the
country, is a two-story house on the East Side of Kansas City. Taped
to the door is a notice declaring that no foreign agents are allowed
to search the premises. Inside, shelf after shelf is filled with
accordion folders holding the names and addresses of the people for
whom Hardin, with the help of his fiancée, Melinda Harrington, has
written bonds. Hardin theorizes that it's possible to file a document
that renounces one's U.S. citizenship and instead declares what he
refers to as American citizenship. By doing this, the newly declared
American citizen can take possession of an account that is supposedly
set up by the feds on the occasion of every person's birth. Next, the
American citizen can file a financial statement with the U.S.
Secretary of State and copyright his or her name. TheAmericans
Republic Party explains that with these three simple steps, it's
possible to become a sovereign with the right to cash checks from
one's established-at-birth account.

In April 2009, the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department
of the Treasury posted a fraud alert. In 2008, Treasury agents noticed
that people were sending in notes and bonds to pay their taxes. "These
scams have been directed towards banks, charities, individuals, and
companies which seek payment on the fraudulent securities," the
Treasury warned. In most cases, perpetrators were writing bonds with a
Treasury Bureau routing number in place of a bank's and were writing
their own Social Security numbers where the checking-account numbers
would normally be listed. "Fraudulent seminars are being held
throughout the United States, which teach attendees how to create the
aforementioned fictitious documents and how to use federal routing
numbers," the Treasury warned.

Other than the part about putting on seminars, the warning was
essentially a description of Hardin's operation. Hardin says he has
never charged his clients anything more than the administrative cost
of filing his notes (typically no more than $100) and has never asked
for repayment on a loan. If he's telling the truth, that's a lot of
risk for little payoff. One of Hardin's early customers was Bob
Suppenbach, who had known him when the cops took Betsy but had lost
track of him. (Those were the years when Hardin was addicted to crack,
Suppenbach learned.) "I ran into a mutual friend, and he told us what
had happened to him." The mutual friend then told Hardin about running
into Suppenbach. "Denny came out to see us two days later and he's
been coming to the house ever since." Suppenbach wasn't immediately
sold on Hardin's new calling. But as a man who had his own troubles
with the government, he saw the appeal. In the late 1960s, state
agents removed Suppenbach and his three brothers from their mother's
care. Suppenbach says his two brothers were later molested by people
who were supposed to watch out for them, and both died in the 1980s
after contracting HIV. Before Hardin was busted in a drug sting,
Suppenbach served four months in the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth
for making cable descramblers for satellite dishes. "I'm the only man
in the whole damn country who's served time in a federal prison for
stealing HBO," Suppenbach says.

He had money troubles, too. "Seems like everything I went and got
involved in, for one reason or another after two or three years, got
obsolete. Got into TV repair, VCR repair, then computers. Then I
thought I'd try construction. I got a company set up, got all my
trailers, my tools, spent thousands of dollars getting set up in
construction. Then the market fell out." Suppenbach had a $60,000
mortgage hanging over him. Then in 2006, he joined the class of
plaintiffs in a multistate lawsuit against the company that supposedly
held his title, Ameriquest Mortgage. The nation's largest subprime
lender settled claims of predatory lending by agreeing to pay $295
million in restitution and changing its lending practices. A year
later, Suppenbach got a collection notice for the same loan from
Citibank, whose parent company, Citigroup, had acquired much of
Ameriquest in 2007. During last year's bank bailout, Citigroup's
arrangement with the government ensured that about $20 billion in
federal dollars would be directly invested in the company, in addition
to $306 billion to help back loans and securities. "They were selling
them back and forth. It didn't matter that they defrauded me and I won
in court. They got rewarded for it."

When it comes to not knowing exactly who owns his mortgage, Suppenbach
has a lot of company. In many cases, even the banks aren't sure. (Last
year, researchers at the University of Iowa found that out of 1,733
foreclosures begun in 2006, 40 percent of the foreclosing creditors
showed no proof of ownership on the note or security investment in the
property.) If a bank has to contest a payment's legitimacy — for
example, if payment is presented in the form of a bonded promissory
note from a self-proclaimed banker — then not being able to show proof
of ownership could actually help the homeowner, or at least let the
homeowner delay getting kicked into the street. After Hardin's 2009
incarceration, the Americans Republic Party Web site posted a list of
other private banks. As of February, the only links were to a man
named Charles Elliot in Henderson, Arkansas (who did not return The
Pitch's calls), and J.W. Patterson, president and founder of Shadow
Mountain Bank in Ash Fork, Arizona. The latter is probably the only
financial institution in the country whose Web site includes links to
prove it's a real bank, along with clip art of doves carrying roses in
their teeth and a teddy bear that somersaults and dances over the P.O.
Box number. Patterson says the Treasury Department is just catching
up. "I've been doing this since the '80s," he says.


The Private Bank of Denny Hardin is the originator of more than $160
million - in bonded promissory notes to borrowers all around the
country. - Sarah Rae
Patterson says he has written bonds for thousands of people, including
members of the Montana Freemen — the group that spent 81 days in a
standoff with the FBI in 1996, defending land they claimed was their
own, separate from the United States. (They were also known for
passing counterfeit checks and money orders.) Today, the group's most
famous former member is Scott Roeder, admitted killer of Kansas
abortion provider George Tiller. Patterson won't say how many clients
request his help in a given day, just that Shadow Mountain has a
budget of $500 a week for ink. In Kansas City, at least one family
considers Hardin an angel. In March 2009, KCTV Channel 5 aired video
of a 44-year-old named Denelle Ginder-Brown, who was near tears. All
around the country, people had been losing their homes. Ginder-Brown,
who worked as a cashier, lived in a house on East 93rd Street near
Indiana Avenue with her husband, 63-year-old James Brown, and their
two children. They had lived there for 15 years and had a deal with
the owner: They would make the monthly mortgage payments and
eventually the house would be theirs. In 2004, the owner died and
willed the house to them. They kept writing checks to Capitol Federal
and never missed a payment.

But within months of the owner's death, Capitol Federal ordered that
the remaining $10,000 balance on the mortgage be paid immediately or
else it would foreclose on the house. The Browns didn't have the
money. A representative from the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation
of America — a group that helps families facing foreclosure — looked
at the case and discovered that Capitol Federal had continued
accepting payments even though it knew that the Browns' deal wasn't a
legal sale of the property. NACA's local director tried to work out a
payment plan, but Capitol Federal refused. In a suit brought against
Ginder-Brown by Capitol Federal, a judge ruled that the bank owned the
property because her name was never on the title. The family was given
a week to find a new place to live. Channel 5 aired the story on
Monday, March 2, 2009, and the property was scheduled for auction on
Monday, March 9.

On the day of the auction, Channel 5 aired a new story. This time,
Denelle Ginder-Brown was smiling. Capitol Federal had relented
because, as it turned out, it was only servicing a loan that was owned
by Freddie Mac, which had decided to work with her on a new loan. But
there was even better news. An anonymous good Samaritan had seen the
Browns on the previous week's broadcast and offered to pay the loan
completely. All Ginder-Brown had to do was wait for the bank to
confirm that it had received the house payment in full, and then she
could see her name on the title. The moral to the story: There are
good people in the world. The family's anonymous savior was Hardin.
"We got down on our knees and we prayed for God to help us because we
didn't have anything else we could do," says Brown, who is currently
on disability. "We believe God makes a way out of no way, and he sent
Denny Hardin."

At first, the Browns were skeptical of Hardin's claims that he was a
private bank. Then he gave them a packet with all the steps he had
taken, what laws he had to abide by, the ordinances that must be
followed. They decided their prayers had been answered. Immediately
after Hardin paid their mortgage, the couple says, they received a
visit from FBI agents telling them that Hardin was paying off other
people's homes with fraudulent bonds. James Brown claims that the
agents asked him to inform on Hardin. But it's hard to convince people
to roll on a man sent by God to save them. The Browns believe that the
status of their house is still uncertain; they claim that they're
still fighting over the initial loan disagreement. Most of their
belongings are in storage, and they're ready to move on a moment's
notice. "We're down to the barest of essentials in here," Brown says.
"Our house is almost naked because we don't know the final outcome.
But if it hadn't been for Denny's help, we'd have been steamrolled
right over from the start." Since he started his bank in September
2008, Hardin says, most of the $160 million in notes that he has
written have been to pay off people's bank loans and keep them from
going into foreclosure. "As far as I can tell, nobody's lost their
house who he helped," Brown says. "He put a new roof on our house, and
he saved us from being on the street, and he never asked us for a
dime."

The thing about probation-violation hearings is that they're supposed
to be simple. There are no mitigating circumstances. There are no
degrees of violation. Either you broke the terms of your probation or
you didn't. Denny Hardin has a gift for making simple things
complicated. At this late-summer hearing in 2009, Hardin is accused of
violating a probation order restricting him from appearing in court or
filing papers on behalf of anyone other than himself. The probation
stems from an incident in 2006, when he camped out on the steps of the
Capitol in Jefferson City and tried to arrest Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder
for violating the U.S. Constitution. Hardin appears unassuming for a
man who wants to bring down the federal government — a "paper
terrorist," as some agents refer to him. He is slight, with long hair
and a beard, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that reads "Americans
Republic Party" and "Don't Tread On Me." Along with the slogans, the
shirt bears the yellow Gadsden flag — a favorite symbol among Tea
Partiers — with its symbol of a coiled snake ready to strike.

The snake also appears on the chests of 30 other men and women of the
Americans Republic Party who have filled the right side of the
courtroom. Each one holds a black, leather-bound copy of the
Constitution. The Browns are there. So is Suppenbach. Several
supporters are Hardin's bank customers. Over the course of what
becomes a two-hour hearing, Hardin objects to every possible authority
that the court tries to exert over him, including its authority to
make him sit down. On this point, Judge Stephen Nixon concedes, and
Hardin spends the trial brandishing a copy of the Constitution over
his head as if it were a Bible at an exorcism. Hardin's argument
against being forced to sit down is the only victory he has today. To
list each overruled objection would take more pages than a pocket
Constitution. Nixon overrules with a calm that seems uncaring to the
members of the Americans Republic Party and generous to the two
prosecuting attorneys.

Hardin's most minor objections involve claims that he was forced to
sign documents under duress. His most sweeping denounce the legitimacy
of the judge, the court, the legal systems of the state of Missouri
and the United States, and the bar-admitted lawyers who have sworn
allegiance to British royalty. Hardin's followers take copious notes,
recording their leader's argument every time Nixon denies a motion.
When the hearing ends, Hardin has been sentenced to five years in
prison. There's a collective gasp from Hardin's supporters. The
prosecuting attorneys and the judge are unmoved. Sentencing is always
followed by a gasp. Hardin takes off his choker necklace and gives it
to Harrington. "I guess now I'll be writing that letter to the
president of the United States from the Jackson County Jail," he says,
before officers escort him away in handcuffs.

In the Moberly Correctional Center, Hardin's days are scheduled around
four strict appointments. At 7:15 a.m., 11 a.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., he
gets a phone call from Harrington. Hardin spends time in the law
library. Being incarcerated hasn't given him second thoughts about
offering his services to his fellow inmates. "My theory is that if
there's no property damage and no injured party, there's no crime," he
tells The Pitch. "Most of the guys in here never committed a crime.
It's just the system bringing them in so it can make money off of
their incarceration." He's certain that if he files enough motions, if
he cites the right laws, he can build a chain of arguments he can
follow back to the world. In Kansas City, the Americans Republic Party
is confident that, any day now, Hardin will be released. "We're all
working on it and doing what we can," James Brown says. "I think he'll
be out in a couple weeks." Patterson, in Arizona, is also trying to
help. "Probably 90 percent of the people he was helping have come to
me," Patterson says. "I'm writing a bond to try and get him out right
now. Of course, he didn't set his bank up totally right — he missed a
few things, but I can help him correct it all when he gets out." The
right paperwork is crucial, Hardin says. "I have to show them I'm
right. We can't be violent. We can't tell people to go out and get
guns. We have to win with the power of our reason. We have to show
them they're wrong and we're right."