I have to laugh out loud every time I hear of some new Government proposed legal reform, which usually amounts to more ways the authorities can rob the public of more money, or assist predators, who pay huge sums in lobbying to the coffers of politicians, to increase the prey base and inhibit its escape, while creating less oversight and accountability for themselves.

For example, the last Bankruptcy Reform Bill, (FN i) passed in the senate, signed by the President into law, does not protect the average citizen from estate rape and asset theft by corrupt Bankruptcy Clubs or Rings. (FN ii) This form of legalized judicial organized crime lurks throughout many Federal Bankruptcy Courts in America.

Whenever someone in the judicial system of this country finds a way to hide behind the color of the law to perpetrate criminal theft against innocent victims, the excuse/defense is always that they are doing nothing technically illegal, while ripping off the public. When does common sense trump a vague or inadequate law that allows theft by people who are supposed to represent the citizenry, not turn them into victims?

Obviously any system of laws that allows judicial criminals to thrive in its loopholes needs overhauling. Corrupt officials preying on society should not get away with it just because the laws they hide behind are inadequate or too vague to protect the innocent. Given the option, many Bankruptcy Courts choose to confuse rather than clarify any issues that may inhibit Bankruptcy Trustees and their Cronies from the ongoing thievery that has become their primary source of income, rather than reasonable fees as was originally intended.

The Bankruptcy Rings are led by corrupt Trustees and their Professionals (other attorneys, accountants, auctioneers, appraisers, bidders, usually all their cronies), rubber stamped by corrupt Ex-Trustees/Attorneys-Turned-Federal-Bankruptcy-Court-Judges, who keep the daisy chain going. These judicial thugs enable this vermin to liquidate a Debtor at a few cents on the dollar to their Cronies (shill-bidders who come to their controlled auctions), in frivolous Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases, and frequently steal all or most of the proceeds, of the auction, in legal fees and bogus charges for themselves, leaving almost nothing for the Creditors or the Debtor. Usually, the shill-bidders kick back money to the Trustee later that they make by selling the ill-gotten-gains, at a fair price, somewhere else. Try to prove it. The least it will cost a Debtor is more years of their life, and if they are really tenacious, it may cost them what's left of their life, through Trustee retaliation, in the form of specious prosecution through their buddies at the local U.S. Attorney's Office.

While perusing the Chapter 7 Bankruptcies in the Federal Bankruptcy Court system via the Internet, I read about a case where an individual Debtor had approximately 26 million dollars in assets and 3 million dollars in debts. A corrupt Bankruptcy Trustee had him in a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, liquidated all his assets, paid the debt and charged his estate 14 million dollars in Trustee related legal fees and miscellaneous charges, for "managing" the estate. Then this Trustee refused to give the Debtor any of his remaining money back that was left in the estate, until he agreed not to pursue any legal complaint against this Trustee.

This case and many others like it, involving criminal activities of officials in the entire nation's Bankruptcy Court system that provide safe havens for the judicial thieves of Debtor's assets, can be perused by anyone with access to a computer. You can study the Court pleadings of this nest of judicial criminals with a Pacer Account. (FN iii) This is obtained at www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov. With a pacer account you can look through the Bankruptcy Court system in your state via the Internet, with details on all their cases, active and closed. This could come in handy later if you get involved in this system and have to fight this den of government protected thieves.

Act quickly if it appears that you are about to fall prey to this type of corruption, and prior to being put into a spurious Involuntary Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, while you still have legal control of your own assets. Immediately sell all your valuables yourself for a fair price on eBay, through major auction houses like Sotheby's, Christies, etc., or to a friend or relative. This is especially necessary in the case of art, antiques, coins, stamps, jewelry, or collectibles, as these types of items are practically given away at bankruptcy auctions, usually to the Trustee's Cronies, and the Debtor has no control of the price realized for his possessions. Many major auction houses will give cash advances on your items, placed with them for auction sale, immediately so you can have some money before the actual sale date as that may be months down the road. Don't worry about normal household goods like a TV, VCR, DVD, etc., unless they are incredibly expensive, as you will get next to nothing for these items in the long run, and you may be able to keep anything that falls into the category of Exempt items, unless the Trustee assigned to you is a particularly blood-thirsty jackal and wants it all.

Make arrangements, in writing, with your own Creditors to pay them 10 to 50 cents on the dollar in an incremental payment plan, and keep any other cash for yourself as an emergency fund, accessible only to you. It only takes three duped Creditors to put you into an involuntary bankruptcy, and a collective debt of only $11,250.00, no matter how many assets and how much cash you have, if you are sucked into a corrupt Bankruptcy Court. Remember, in this arena you have to be a guerilla fighter, using the corrupt Court's own weapons against them, or have an attorney willing to do it, which is a slim possibility. I never advocate breaking any laws, but when people have had their civil and constitutional rights violated by a local corrupt judiciary; those people have the right to protect themselves by creative means. For amplification of this concept, read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of The United States of America.

A Bankruptcy Trustee has the power to seize everything you own and all your money, if he can find it, and leave you with nothing to hire legal representation or pay for food and shelter, which is the general idea. You are then forced to defend yourself pro se, while dead broke, and unless you can become an immediate legal savant, you are SOL. This would seem to be as unconstitutional as arresting and incarcerating a criminal suspect and not providing him with free legal counsel. I would love to test the constitutionality of forcing someone into an Involuntary Chapter 7 Bankruptcy against their will, seizing all their assets, and not providing them with free legal counsel to defend their estate and life from thuggish Bankruptcy Trustees bent on liquidating this type of Debtor in a bankruptcy auction and stealing the proceeds in dishonest fees.

Before this happens, make sure you make all your Creditors aware of the fact that without their initial assistance as dupes for the corrupt Bankruptcy Trustees, it will be infinitely more difficult for these legal parasites to prey on estates or businesses, thus circumventing your Creditors. When discussing discounting Creditor debt or stretching the payments out, do not fail to mention to your Creditors how they will receive nothing or next to nothing, as an alternative, if they leave it in the hands of the Bankruptcy Courts, whose Trustees are hovering in circles like vultures, waiting for the near dead to expire so they can pick the carcass clean, ahead of any legitimate Creditor. Make it abundantly clear that Bankruptcy Trustees only use Creditors as pawns to assist them in getting you into an Involuntary Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, or converting you from a Voluntary Chapter 13, or Chapter 11, to a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, where the Trustees have full control of all the assets, for their own enrichment. The Creditors are always better off dealing with you directly than these leeches.

These Bankruptcy Trustees have forgotten long ago the true nature of their job, which has now morphed into profiteers of the misfortune of others who are trying to start life over and pay Creditors as best they can through a hopelessly corrupt kangaroo Bankruptcy Court system. This is why there needs to be a law limiting whatever Trustees and their Crony Professionals get out of any estate, so they cannot wipe it out ahead of Creditors and the Debtor, as they do now, with Judges looking the other way and rubber stamping all of their pleadings, allowing them to steal whatever they can. There is a limit on Trustee fees as percentages of the estate, but no limit on hired Crony fees. This is why the Trustees take turns being the lead Trustee and hiring a Crony attorney from the Trustee pool as a "Professional" in each case. Each time one of them is a Professional, assisting the Trustee, they can charge unlimited fees against the estate.

The true spirit of the Bankruptcy Code in this country is degenerated beyond salvage without true reform bills being passed to prevent these predators from running their legalized theft of asset rings. Even credit card companies leave the Host alive, where Bankruptcy Trustees are parasites that kill the Host and move their parasitic sucker mouth to the next ailing Host nearby. Since true reform is not likely to happen anytime soon, your only defense is knowledge of the system and how to avoid these hyenas once you are wounded in the wild.

Trustees in the Bankruptcy Court are continuously on the look out for plump juicy estates that they can rob, like modern day Pirates sailing an endless sea of bankruptcies, searching with their spy glasses for the loaded merchant ship, in the form of a Debtor with substantial assets, in distress. Uninformed naive Creditors that think they will get anything from a Trustee, or a bankruptcy auction are always encouraged by these Trustee Privateers to assist in putting a Debtor into an Involuntary Chapter 7 filing, liquidation bankruptcy, to enable the Trustee to take over the estate. That is the last anyone else gets out of it, once it is under their control, as the Debtor's estate is, by law, a possession of the Trustee from that point forward. These Trustees also troll for people and businesses in a voluntary bankruptcy, like a Chapter 13, or Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, that have substantial assets, that they can get their rubber stamp Judge to convert to a Chapter 7, with the same effect as the Involuntary Chapter 7, as far as their ability to rape the estate. Trustees and their Professionals get paid their fees and charges first, which are always created to clean out the estate completely, if at all possible. This is nothing less than state controlled, government sanctioned, organized crime, and there is nothing you can do about it, other than stay ahead of their carnage by pre-emptive planning and keeping your Creditors informed about this treachery, so they are educated against becoming dupes.

A good point to keep in mind if you are one of the unfortunate doomed prey in the line of fire by one of these predators is as follows: According to 706 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code, you are allowed to convert any voluntary or involuntary Chapter 7 Bankruptcy that you either filed yourself or has been inflicted on you, once, to a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, as long as the case has never been converted from another Chapter in bankruptcy, previously. This way, you are allowed to regain control of your estate, under the Chapter 13 Bankruptcy provisions and sell your own assets to pay Creditors, if the Trustee has managed to get his fangs into substantial assets and appears to be ready to devour them.

The only way the Trustee could re-convert you back into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which he will attempt to do, and regain full control of your assets to liquidate for his benefit at this point, is to prove that you are above the legal limit allowed for "Unsecured Creditors" (FN iv) ($307,675.00 total), or are above the limit for "Secured Creditors" (FN v) ($922,975.00 total), or you have no provable employment and assets capable of funding a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy "Plan". (FN vi) Therefore, make sure that you never exceed these levels, especially in any plea bargain you may ever make that includes Court enforced restitution of any Creditors, as the Bankruptcy Court will consider restitution to be an unsecured debt, even though it cannot be discounted or escaped in any form of bankruptcy and would therefore appear to be a secured debt by any common sense. Also maintain provable employment, even in your own company with payment stubs, and maintain a minimum list of your assets that would easily fund a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan.

Unfortunately the entrepreneur of today must be familiar with this area of the law in order to prevent his early demise at the hands of this lowest level of the attorney food chain, the Bankruptcy Trustee. These Bankruptcy Trustees, particularly the Chapter 7 Trustees, are the absolute lowest form of bottom dwellers of the species that practice law. What's the difference between a Catfish and a Bankruptcy Trustee Lawyer? One is a scum sucking bottom feeder and the other is a fish."

i. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was passed by the Senate March 11, 2005, passed by the Congress April 14, 2005, and signed into law by the President April 20, 2005. Sections 308, 322, and 330 of the homestead exemption took effect at the President's signing with the remainder of the act in effect as of October 17, 2005. The bill seems to have little or no consumer protection, but allows predatory Bankruptcy Trustees, lenders and credit card companies to pursue Debtors more easily and take their assets. (back)

ii. Bankruptcy Clubs or Bankruptcy Rings are a type of organized crime that consists of extortion, racketeering and embezzlement in the US Bankruptcy Courts. They usually involve the cooperation of a corrupt Bankruptcy Trustee, their Professionals, and a Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge who gives rubber stamp approval of all the actions involving the theft of a Debtor's assets to the detriment of legitimate Creditors and the Debtor. (back)

vi. Within 14 days of filing a Chapter 13 Petition, a "Plan" must be submitted to the Bankruptcy Court which will explain how a Debtor proposes to pay Creditors on a monthly basis by paying a single monthly payment to the Chapter 13 Trustee, who will disperse the funds to Creditors. The payment is based on the income and expenses submitted by the Debtor. A Debtor must show that they have the ability to meet the payments which will include all of the normal monthly expenses of the Debtor, secured Creditor payments, an amount for attorney's fees, arrearage on any accounts, trustee fees, and administration fees.

If you are a Debtor, Creditor, or Attorney representing either, and you have become a victim of a corrupt Bankruptcy Court Trustee, and/or Trustee Professional, I want to hear about your case. Please email me at jackknox101@yahoo.com and tell me your Bankruptcy Court Case Number, State, and a very brief explanation (no more than one short paragraph) of how you were victimized. For security reasons, DO NOT add any attachments to your email, as they will not be opened. I am particularly interested in cases involving Trustees and their Professionals stealing Debtor assets. If I am interested in your case, I will contact you. Thank you.