Editors Note: This article was originally published in the July 19, 2023 issue of the Chronicle Progress. Some information may be outdated.
Sovereign citizen claims to chair company managing trillion dollars in assets
A Fourth District Court judge has nullified a series of dubious property records filings in Millard County, siding with a group of private landowners who filed two wrongful lien civil court actions in June against a self-styled sovereign citizen who attempted to file ownership claims on more than 600 acres of their property last year.
Judge Anthony Howell issued two separate orders last Wednesday against Nathan DeWayne Nearman and associated parties, including an injunction against Nearman filing any future liens anywhere in the state without the court’s approval.
In one order, the judge nullified eight separate filings Nearman made against a single 40-acre property held by a local family trust. Court records show Nearman didn’t respond to the family’s court petition. The order allows the petitioners to seek attorney’s fees and other costs against Nearman at a future date.
The other order was issued in a civil action brought by about a half-dozen property owners, represented by Delta attorney Todd Anderson. The order nullified nine liens and other fraudulent recordings concerning some 582 acres of private property.
In this order, Judge Howell allowed for damages and other costs to be recouped by the plaintiffs in future proceedings. He also allowed Nearman and associated parties to request in writing a hearing to contest the order within 10 days.
“If you fail to request a hearing within 10 days, this Order will automatically become a civil wrongful lien injunction which will not expire until 3 years after it is served,” according to the court order.
Court records don’t show that Nearman or others named in the lawsuit ever bothered to reply.
Anderson’s clients are seeking treble damages, about $3,000, for each wrongful lien filed, amounting to $27,000, according to the original complaint filed in the case. However, the complaint also alleges Nearman—he was named as a defendant along with a person named Luke Benjamin Eyre, a Utah company named Nathan Nearman LLC, as well as Nathan DeWayne Nearman as trustee of Turning Green Trust—reasonably knew his liens were filed fraudulently, a violation of a statute that allows damages as much as $10,000 per wrongful lien, or $90,000.
Private property was only a small part of the amount of property Nearman originally filed such fraudulent records against between May and November last year. He filed similarly dubious claims against some 8,000 acres, mostly public property, owned by entities such as the Division of Wildlife Resources. He has yet to face court action for that from state authorities.
Millard County is not the only place in Utah where Nearman attempted his bogus land grab.
A number of wrongful lien petitions have been filed against him in state courts by multiple plaintiffs, including one in April 2019, one in May 2019, and one in February 2020.
Nearman faces a first-degree felony burglary charge out of Utah County over one incident in December 2021. It involved Nearman allegedly using a group of armed men in an attempt to evict a property owner from a home in Springville he similarly claimed was his. Police discovered Nearman near the property with multiple firearms and 400 rounds of ammo, according to court records.
He has so far eluded authorities here. That’s probably because Nearman may have moved his road show to Miami, Fla.
According to a Linked-In page, Nearman is chairman of the board for an entity called Resolute Holdings Trust. He claims to have started in that position in June 2022, just after his record filing spree in Millard County. According to the web page, the trust manages “a trillion dollars in assets,” including “thousands of acres of real estate.” Besides land, the entity supposedly also manages “billions in crypto” and “revolutionary technologies” improving the lives of people around the globe.
Though the page states the company is located in Salt Lake City, a recent job posting for Resolute Holdings Trust sought an “executive assistant to the president” in Miami.
The job description seeks a person to assist “a busy Chairman to the Board that manages/directs/oversees a consortium of companies, projects, global initiatives and more than a Trillion dollars in assets.”
Pay for the assistant position? $6,000 to $15,000 per month.
The job was posted in late April.
It’s unclear whether the “trillion dollars in assets” includes the thousands of acres of property Nearman attempted to claim.
