He goes by a curious looking name in court records—Nathan-Dewayne: Nearman©
No typos. The copyright symbol, hyphen and colon are how it reads.
He calls himself a “non-corporate living man” and hails from, well, all over—some public records show Utah, others Washington, Florida, Arizona and Georgia.
By all appearances, Nearman is what is known as a sovereign citizen.
He even has an IMDb page—that’s an online clearinghouse of info on everything Hollywood, from feature films to TV shows and the people behind them all. He’s listed as a producer on three films.
And right out of a low-budget, B-movie script, this sovereign citizen spooked a number of county officials last year when he attempted to take possession of thousands and thousands of acres of land in Millard County.
In July 2022, Nearman filed a “Declaration of Homestead” with the county recorder’s office on 8,361 acres of property, attaching 1800s-era federal land patent documents as “exhibits” somehow proving the legitimacy of his claim.
Much of the property is owned by the state’s Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration. Some parcels are owned by the state’s Division of Natural Resources, including a few around the Clear Lake Waterfowl Management Area. Another bunch are actually privately owned, creating quite a stir among some county residents who learned a stranger they’d never heard of before just casually clouded the title to their land seemingly on a whim.
While Sierra Dickens, the county’s elected recorder, duly filed Nearman’s homestead declaration last summer, she did nothing to change the actual title to the properties.
As she explains it, homestead declarations don’t legally convey ownership rights in and of themselves. And as a recorder, just because she attaches a document onto a property record doesn’t mean that document has any control over ownership rights. In fact, state law is a bit cloudy on how much discretion county recorders actually have. When property disputes erupt, a civil court and district judge is the final arbiter, not a county recorder.
But by around October, Nearman began phoning Dickens asking why she failed to change the property titles. By December he and an entourage showed up in person at the recorder’s office and served public notice, demanding title to the properties in question.
Accusations of criminality and threats of litigation were tossed around. Dickens was accused of costing Nearman “millions of dollars.” The county attorney was called and then the cops showed up to ensure the peace. Nearman and his coterie were asked to leave the premises. They did. It was quite the scene for the otherwise normally tranquil business transacted at the old courthouse in Fillmore.
County Attorney Pat Finlinson said the whole episode is a bit scary.
“This is one that makes me nervous,” he said recently. “We knew pretty quickly that this was a bogus filing. I let SITLA and DNR know right away that they needed to do something.”
What made Finlinson particularly nervous was that Nearman has a growing track record of pulling similar shenanigans involving Utah property records, including a case in Utah County that went from civil to criminal in December 2021. That was when Nearman allegedly used a group of armed men in an attempt to evict a property owners from a home in Springville he similarly claimed was his. Police discovered Nearman near the property with a 40-caliber pistol, two AR- 15 rifles and 400 rounds of ammo.
“The defendant stated that he had the locks changed and put up the (eviction and no trespassing) signs. When asked why he was armed, the defendant stated that he was prepared to engage in a violent encounter,” a Utah County Sheriff’s Office investigator recorded in a probable cause statement about the incident.
Nearman faces a first-degree felony aggravated burglary charge over that one. He’s also on record thumbing his nose at the court, the judge, the sheriff and the Utah County attorney, claiming their issuance of a court summons on the charge in August 2022— Finlinson said he was mystified there wasn’t an arrest warrant issued—amounted to harassment and abuse, framed in the gobbledygook, legal-sounding language common among sovereign citizens.
Process servers had little success finding Nearman, according to court records. There’s been no movement in the case since October, court records show.
Still, the aggravated burglary charge represents an escalation in Nearman’s legal tussles. A dive into Utah and federal court records indicates Nearman is no stranger to civil litigation, stretching back to at least 2014, when he was sued over failure to repay a $250,000 loan to one of his film projects. A default judgment was entered in that case in 2015 in the amount of $514,472.
Nearman was named in another 2014 civil lawsuit along with other defendants over a $3 million loan also possibly involving a film production. A $3 million judgment was entered in that case in 2017. Coincidentally, at least one of Nearman’s fellow defendants in that case also happens to be the owner of the Springville home Nearman attempted to take possession of leading to the felony burglary charge.
A number of wrongful lien petitions have been filed against Nearman in Utah courts by multiple plaintiffs, including one in April 2019, one in May 2019, and one in February 2020.
A restraining order and civil injunction was also sought against Nearman over the 2021 incident involving the Springville burglary charge.
Attempts to reach Nearman by phone were not successful.
A Leamington woman who was with Nearman’s group when they visited the recorder’s office in Fillmore in December was contacted and agreed to connect the Chronicle Progress to Nearman. But he failed to call the newspaper on the day scheduled.
An attorney for the man whose Springville home Nearman attempted to take possession of also did not return calls seeking comment.
As for Millard County property owners affected by Nearman’s records filings, Finlinson said they will likely need to petition Fourth District Court for redress.
The county attorney said he’s only received a few emails from Nearman since December.
“He’s emailed me a couple of times, she (Dickens) and I are basically under indictment. I’m waiting to either be kidnapped or sued,” Finlinson said, half joking.
Lynn Zubeck, a Division of Wildlife Resources biologist who manages the Clear Lake Waterfowl Management Area, said he was contacted by Finlinson and told of the property filings. He said he contacted DWR law enforcement and kept a vigilant eye out for anything suspicious.
“We were very concerned. We got our law enforcement involved with it and we were constantly keeping an eye on the facilities in Clear Lake. Nothing ever happened but everybody was very concerned for quite a while,” he told the Chronicle Progress. “We’re just trying to protect the property we own and what the sportsmen own.”
Zubeck said he couldn’t help but think back to 2016, when armed sovereign citizens, members of Ammon Bundy’s ragtag group, took over a wildlife management center in Oregon, occupying the site for some time before a shootout led to the death of one militia member and the arrests of several more.
“We didn’t want it to turn into a Bundy standoff like what happened in Oregon, where they overtook a WMA and took up residency in it,” Zubeck recalled. “I don’t know what these guys are thinking. I don’t know how a person can just decide, I don’t understand how they think.”
The county recorder’s office offers a free online service called Fraud Guard, where property owners can sign up to receive immediate notice about any records filed against their property.
Dickens announced the service in February and encouraged residents to sign up.
While she said the service would not have prevented Nearman from filing his homestead declaration, it would have alerted property owners much sooner to the filings and potential for clouded title.
“It does not stop something from being recorded on your property. That’s the confusion people are having right now. It just notifies you that something has been recorded,” she said, adding that only about two dozen people have so far signed up for the service.
