For Broderick, It’s Payback Time

M. Elizabeth Broderick’s promises sounded too good to be true. They were. And now the Palmdale woman who called herself the “lien queen” faces 200 years in prison for telling hundreds of desperate and gullible followers that they could wipe out their debts with phony checks purportedly drawn against the federal government. Broderick was convicted this month on 26 charges of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering.

A woman with a history of scams and schemes, Broderick claimed to follow the “freemen” movement and rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government. At seminars in the Antelope Valley, she duped hundreds of people into buying homemade checks she said were backed by liens against the federal government. The seminars cost up to $200 per person. The checks cost another $100 each. Broderick accepted cash, money orders or cashier’s checks--but not her own bogus “comptroller’s warrants.”

That’s because they are worthless. Her rhetoric aside, Broderick was a con artist, a thief. Between October 1995 and April 1996, Broderick and her cronies issued 8,000 phony warrants for more than $800 million. Few were fooled by the checks, but Broderick managed to net about $1.2 million in the scam. Her followers, who could ill afford the two-day seminars in the first place, were the big losers. Many had their cars repossessed or found themselves deeper in debt.

It’s in vogue these days to knock the federal government for its excesses or failures. Anyone with a grudge or a scam can set up shop as a “sovereign citizen” and claim exemption from laws enacted to keep others safe. That was Broderick’s angle. Scraping away the veneer of patriotism reveals Broderick and her ilk for what they are: crooks who hold themselves above the law.

Few tears are shed when burglars or muggers land behind bars. None should be shed for Broderick.