Montana Freemen - Members of The Montana Freemen and Their Sentences

Members of The Montana Freemen and Their Sentences

• LeRoy M. Schweitzer - 22 years. Died in federal prison on September 20, 2011 of natural causes, at age 73 years.
• Emmett Clark - (Pled guilty) Time served plus 3 years under supervision
• Richard Clark - 12 years
• James Hance - 5 years, 7 months
• Lavon T. Hanson - (Pled guilty with plea bargain), 1 year, 1 day
• Dana Dudley Landers - (Pled guilty) 1 year, 9 months with credit for 2 years and 3 months already served

On 7 April 2008, Russell Dean Landers had his 11-year, 3-month sentence extended by 15 years for attempting to extort his release from prison. He and two other inmates at the federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma had demanded millions of dollars from officials for the use of their names, which they claimed were "copyrighted." They were found guilty of "conspiring to impede the duties of federal prison officials and extortion in (their) efforts to gain release from prison by making financial demands on prison staff and attempting to seize their property."

On 6 April 2010, Daniel E. Peterson was sentenced to additional time for filing bogus liens from prison against three federal judges. One of the judges targeted was the judge who sentenced Peterson to prison originally. Petersen was sentenced in 1996 to 15 years. He was convicted on 19 of 20 counts, which included bank fraud and armed robbery. While serving his sentence in a federal prison in Minnesota, Petersen devised a scheme in which to retaliate against three judges in his case. Federal prosecutors, after investigating, found that Petersen invented a company that supposedly held assets that included a $100 trillion default judgment against the United States. He then sold “shares" of the phony company to fellow inmates and others. He claimed these shares were backed by “redemption certificates" to be redeemed when the judgment was collected. The judgment he referred to came from a self-created court, after former Secretary of State Madeline Albright declined to respond to his demands. He was demanding $100 trillion, as well as $1 billion per day in interest for unlawfully confining him. Petersen followed up by filing liens against property owned by the three federal judges, as well as offering bounties for the arrest of the same judges. The purpose was to entice someone to bring the three judges to Minnesota, in order to respond to his liens.

A 2011 National Public Radio report claimed that some of the people associated with this case were imprisoned in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit.