Woman With ‘Freemen’ Ties Charged With Forgery

Ventura County prosecutors Thursday filed forgery charges against a Westlake woman, accusing her of posting bail and paying court fines with bogus checks designed by the anti-government “freemen” group.

Prosecutors immediately sought a bench warrant for the arrest of Toby J. Chanel, 54, whose last known address was in Thousand Oaks’ Westlake neighborhood. Investigators had not located her as of late Thursday.

The three felony charges filed Thursday allege that Chanel passed three fictitious checks in the fall in an attempt to resolve two traffic cases for driving an unregistered vehicle and driving without a license.

Two of the checks, written for $4,000 and $5,000, were made payable to Ventura County Municipal Court to pay court-imposed fines, authorities said. The two checks were written for amounts that greatly exceeded the fines. Chanel attached a letter requesting a cash rebate to compensate her for the difference, they said.

A third check for $2,587 was delivered to Ventura Bail Bonds to cover arrest warrants related to the two traffic cases.

All of the checks were either rejected by banks or held as suspicious and turned over the Sheriff’s Department.

Det. Bill Stovall determined that the checks were forgeries, based in part because they falsely claimed to be payable on sight at the office of the postmaster, according to his statement filed in court. The post office does not honor such checks.

“The checks appeared to be printed on a possible home computer due to the fact that the ink was able to be rubbed off by the hand,” Stovall wrote.

The detective sent the checks and an attached letter to the sheriff’s crime lab, where a technician discovered a right thumb print that matched that on Chanel’s booking card, he wrote.

Chanel is one of more than a dozen Ventura County residents under investigation for attempting to negotiate millions of dollars in fraudulent checks designed by the anti-government freemen or similar militia groups.

Armed members of the freemen have been in the news recently since they holed up in a ranch house in rural Montana and were surrounded by federal agents.

The standoff was sparked by the arrest of freemen organizer LeRoy M. Schweitzer on federal bank fraud charges. The checks passed by Chanel carried Schweitzer’s computer-generated signature, authorities said.

Of all the local anti-government protesters, Chanel has been one of the most prolific in filing unusual documents in court that demand millions of dollars from authorities who she claims have violated her rights.

Like others with ties to the militia movement, Chanel said in court filings that she is a sovereign citizen who does not recognize the authority of the courts or the federal government.

She has filed papers in her traffic cases to “impeach” judges who handled various aspects of her ongoing traffic citation cases, accusing them of “prejudicial conduct” and operating “star chambers.”

Half a dozen judges are named among other defendants in a civil lawsuit Chanel filed in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles related to her arrests in 1992 and 1994 for traffic violations.

And she has submitted “Notices of Dishonor,” claiming that sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors and judges owed her nearly $22 million for “attempt[ing] to induce me by trickery and gross misrepresentation through fraud and deceit to deprive me of my inalienable right to travel.”

Her quasi-legal actions could force Ventura County judges to transfer her felony criminal case to another jurisdiction.

“Frequently, the court does find that cases like this should be directed to a judge in another county,” Assistant County Counsel Robert R. Orellana said. “That is a possibility in this case.”

Chanel recently escalated the paper war by sending notices to Ventura County judges and law enforcement officers of multimillion-dollar “liens” that she has lodged against them.

In some cases, she has sent them second notices forgiving them of portions of the purported debt. Attached is an IRS Form 1099, carbon copies to the IRS and State Franchise Tax Board.

Since a forgiven debt is taxable just like income, some judges fear that her actions could trigger an IRS audit.

In his court filing, Stovall wrote that he has looked into the 1099 forms sent to Judges Vincent J. O’Neill Jr., John R. Smiley and William L. Peck. The judges assured Stovall that they had never worked for Chanel or owed her money and that the documents were fraudulent.

Stovall also checked with the IRS. An agent told him that the IRS Fresno office had not received the 1099 forms and that the agent was going to check if the forms had been forwarded to the agency’s office in Utah.