Everyone Needs To Be Aware About This

It is very scary that DTM, LLC, of St. Marie has not been mentioned to the public of Valley County as having sovereign citizen members; and what is worse, the fact that they have said they will be teaching their philosophy at St. Marie. For those who are not familiar with what a sovereign citizen is, please check the words “sovereign citizen” out on the Web, to include the FBI link.

The history to date of DTM is they wanted to declare eminent domain at St. Marie, make 31 zones within St. Marie, take over the Village Association, charge the St. Marie Condo $5,000 per unit for the land under their condo units and the list goes on. To do a lot of this and to gain control, they are now coming after St. Marie Development Corporation, which is a corporation that was developed to represent the creditors as a result of a bankruptcy of Terry Parks, and each creditor received stock.

Marv Bethea, who came in with Terry Parks, was made manager of the new corporation, who a lot of people trusted, including myself. I as a major stock holder later attended a few meetings and saw that the trust may have been misplaced. I fired Mr. Bethea and filed a law suit. I hired another manager for SMDC and paid the $4,000 a month plus expenses for years that the liquidating trust had approved for managers. I have spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own funds trying to make St. Marie a beautiful place again and giving value to St. Marie housing.

The new manager traveled a lot trying to bring industry to St. Marie. Later I was made manager and I worked with the lieutenant governor’s wife. She started the St. Marie Hands of Hope, a non profit, and traveled to Washington, D.C., with her husband and she visited St. Marie. A friend of hers that traveled to St. Marie with her said the negative response she got and the negative letters she read on the bulletin board stopped her momentum.

I then got Century 21 to put a real estate package together and got OCI, a company with 446 units, Marv Bethea and Bob Dunseth to go with SMDC to market the property nationally. The only way SMDC stock could (can) have value or any hope of St. Marie developing, three things are needed, (1) quiet title (2) consolidated inventory and (3) national advertising. I had to give a judgment to Bethea and Dunseth to drop liens and I dropped the SMDC law suit in exchange for a required quiet title on the properties so the property could be listed nationally. This failed because the quiet title action did not take place as required.

I do not give up easy. The St. Marie that Judy and I named for our daughter and the Virgin Mary cannot be a disgrace to the name. I sold a painting appraised at $450,000 for $150,000 at auction through Sotheby’s Auction House in New York; I sold a condo in the Placer Hotel in Helena and two acres with view at Fort Peck, and committed to a $500,000 note. With these funds I accomplished the impossible: I purchased the OCI 446 units and traded with Bethea to consolidate inventory. I had the survey done to give the condos the properties under their condos (the same property DTM wants to charge them $5,000 for). After all this I did not have the funds to pay the taxes; DTM received tax assignments and has gained a stronghold.

To accomplish their goals, they need to control SMDC. To do this, they purchased some stock of the SMDC and are now trying to take over SMDC by stating it is not being run according to state law. DTM will be stating that I have not had yearly stockholder meetings (which everyone knows I have not). I have had a board of directors and kept them informed and we have been in good standing with the Secretary of State, but have not dotted the “i’s” or crossed the “t’s” in many instances according to specific requirements, so they will present a case.

These tactics seem to be common with the sovereign citizen movement. I am not here to judge them, but I understand they have received tickets in Glasgow for no driver’s licenses and I understand that they submitted a 25-page explanation to the county on why they feel as sovereign citizens that they do not need to have a driver’s license.

I do not believe they can take over either the Village or SMDC, but I do believe they can cause problems especially if they grow in numbers. I that a member of DTM said he plans on teaching the sovereign citizen theory at St. Marie. I believe everyone needs to be aware of what I have written and submit here for publication.

To see what St. Marie looked like in 1996 and what it can be again, visit stmariemt.com and view the video. Contact me at [email protected].