The Christian Patriot Connection

Distinctive features familiar to common law documents

There are at least two versions of the Fortuna Alliance "Pre-launch Application," both with a "common law" contract attached to them. (The contracts differ only in the money-back guarantee. The early contracts promise double the "original application fee" back and the later ones only promise to return the amount invested.) Christian Patriot "common law" documents have several distinctive features which are noticeable in the Fortuna contract: Citation of the U.S. Constitution, not statutory law, as the governing law. "...shall be interpreted and construed under the Common Law of the Constitution of the United States of America." "This common law contract does not depend on any statutes for its authority." Citations and legal quotations which are misleading or subject to misinterpretation due to the use of ellipsis (...). Many Christian Patriot pseudo-legal documents look nearly indistinguishable from authentic legal documents. The first paragraph of the Fortuna contract contains three quotations and four citations from the Constitution. In one of these quotations, "No state shall... pass any ... law impairing the Obligation of Contracts..." [ellipsis in original] There are no less than three ellipsis in eleven words. Furthermore, the use of this quotation might suggest to an uniformed person that the Fortuna contract in some way was not subject to state laws. The use of lower case and upper case initial letters to distinguish between two classes of citizen. "This common law contract is a specific type of written contract between parties who are legally able to contract by virtue of their age, i.e., over 18 years of age, and either a U.S. citizen or a state Citizen." The Fortuna documents and tapes from 1995 and early 1996 also specified three levels of "membership:" Elite ($250.00), Premier ($600) and Ambassador ($1,250). The Premier and Ambassador levels of "membership" gave investors access to "specialized knowledge in the acquisition of and protection of assets and wealth through varied instruments such as pure trusts, both domestic and off-shore." According to one Christian Patriot handbook, a "common law pure trust" is a tactic by which a person files documents claiming to transfer assets to an unregistered "common law trust" and then refuses to communicate with the IRS. Like most other Christian Patriot tax-resistance schemes, this will not grant any immunity from tax liabilities, but will guarantee that taxes, interest and penalties can be assessed from the date that income is diverted into the "trust."

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