MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A Brooklyn Park couple pleaded guilty Friday in Ramsey County District Court to a massive fraudulent lien case, one that totaled more than $100 billion against multiple victims.
Thomas Wayne Eilertson, 49, and Lisa Joan-Connery Eilertson, 45, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of fraudulent or improper financing statement – invalid lien or security agreement in connection with a $114 billion harassment scheme between November 2009 and May 2010.
The duo will be sentenced on June 7, 2013.
According to the complaint, the case began when the defendants’ Minneapolis home was foreclosed upon by their mortgage company in 2009, resulting in a Hennepin County sheriff’s sale in December 2009.
In response, the Eilertsons, on the advice of someone they met on the Internet, began filing Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) liens against anyone associated with their economic misfortune. Each lien was filed at the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office in St. Paul under the name “Blessings of Liberty” leading the defendants to believe this would shield them from civil and criminal liability.
Over the course of nearly 18 months, the Eilertsons systematically filed numerous liens against a host of public and private individuals.
In a court filing on April 30, 2010, they accuse Mark S. Thompson (Hennepin County District Court Administrator), James T. Swenson (Hennepin County Chief Judge), Michael O. Freeman (Hennepin County Attorney), Toni Beitz (Assistant Hennepin County Attorney), Rick Sheridan, Kimball Foster (Hennepin County Examiner of Titles), Michael Cunniff (Hennepin County Registrar of Titles), Richard W. Stanek (Hennepin County Sheriff), Brad Erickson (Hennepin County Sheriff’s Deputy) and others of participating in a conspiracy to defraud the Eilertsons of their home that was sold at a sheriff’s sale on Dec. 8, 2009.
The filing then went on to demand $1 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. In February 2010 the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office referred the case to St. Paul Police.
