Man Accused of Passing Phony Militia Money

A Newbury Park man with ties to an anti-government militia group in Wisconsin has been indicted on charges of passing bogus money orders to buy six military-style assault rifles, Ventura County prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Timothy Paul Kootenay, a 34-year-old tree-trimmer, was arrested Easter Sunday in a remote area of Montana.

He is being extradited to Ventura County where he will be arraigned in Superior Court this morning on charges of grand theft and passing fictitious monetary instruments, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said in a statement.

Kootenay, also known as Timothy Paul Shultz, is being held on $25,000 bail, but not in the Ventura County Jail. His location was not disclosed.

“I am not at liberty to discuss his whereabouts for security reasons,” said Mark Aveis, a deputy district attorney.

Kootenay was indicted on March 6 after an investigation led by the U.S. Secret Service found that he bought six military-style assault rifles from an Oklahoma City company called FBF Firearms using two fictitious certified money orders, prosecutors said.

Some of the rifles were delivered cash-on-delivery to Kootenay at his residence in the Newbury Park neighborhood of Thousand Oaks. He picked up the others at the United Parcel Service office in Thousand Oaks.

Both times, according to prosecutors, he used fictitious money orders that prosecutors believe were obtained from a militia-type group in Tigerton, Wis., called the “Family Farm Preservation.”

UPS accepted the money orders in lieu of cash. But after its bank refused to negotiate the money orders, FBF Firearms notified the Secret Service, which as an agency in the U.S. Treasury Department investigates counterfeiting cases.

Upon the request of the district attorney’s office, a Ventura County grand jury began investigating the case and issued a subpoena for Kootenay to testify.

At that point, he fled the county, sources said, and county Sheriff’s Department and Secret Service investigators tracked him down to a rural area in northern Montana.

The Family Farm Preservation, based in northern Wisconsin, is a spinoff of the militant anti-government Posse Comitatus of the 1970s, law enforcement authorities believe. Leaders of the group are in jail, after being arrested last year on federal mail fraud charges involving the distribution of about $65 million in phony money order kits.

The posse’s clash with law enforcement in Tigerton during the 1980s is reminiscent of the standoff between the anti-government “freemen” tax protesters and FBI agents in northern Montana.

Investigators have not established any link between Kootenay and the Montana-based freemen, another group that authorities say has passed bogus checks in Ventura County.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been investigating Southern California residents who have attempted to pass millions of dollars in bogus checks in Ventura County and elsewhere in the state.

A federal judge recently issued a temporary restraining order against Elizabeth Broderick of Palmdale, barring her from issuing or promoting her checks, which she claims are backed by the liens lodged against the government.

Broderick has been holding seminars every other week to show people how to pay off their debts for free by issuing what authorities call bogus checks bearing the words “Payable at Office of Postmaster.”

Broderick, a pupil of Montana freemen leader LeRoy Schweitzer, said she does not know if Kootenay has attended her seminars.

“I don’t know him, but I can help him blow their indictment right out of the water,” Broderick said on Tuesday. “They,” she said referring to the government, “have no jurisdiction.”

* PATRIOT FOR PROFIT

A Palmdale woman who teaches people how to use phony checks has a history of running scams. B9