United States v. Buckner

Summarized by David Treacy , U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Kentucky
1 week 5 days ago

Case Type:

Consumer

Case Status:

Affirmed

Citation:

No. 23-3811 (6th Circuit, Jun 29,2026) Not Published

Tag(s):

Ruling:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the sovereign citizen-defendant/appellant's fraud convictions. The defendant, acting pro se, treated his criminal case like a commercial dispute. Among other appellate rulings, the Sixth Circuit upheld his waiver of counsel as knowing and voluntary and held the lack of a competency evaluation wasn't error; his fringe beliefs and bizarre filings didn't prove mental incapacity. Pertinent here, the circuit also upheld a two-level sentencing enhancement for bankruptcy fraud based on his conduct as a petition preparer.

Procedural context:

This opinion mainly concerns a sovereign citizen's efforts to challenge his criminal convictions. Pertinent to bankruptcy, the primary legal issue concerned "the district court’s application of a two-level enhancement for 'a misrepresentation or other fraudulent action during the course of a bankruptcy proceeding.' U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(9)(B)." Through counsel on appeal, the defendant contended his conduct occurred when preparing petitions for others before the petitions were filed; thus, he argued, this conduct did not occur "during the course of a bankruptcy proceeding." The Sixth Circuit labeled this argument "temporal hair-splitting[,]" stated "[f]raud does not evaporate the instant the petition is filed[,]" and cited a Fifth Circuit decision for the proposition that "courts have read the enhancement to encompass pre-petition conduct, such as aiding a debtor in the concealment or transfer of assets prior to the filing of his bankruptcy petition."

Facts:

For about seven years, Defendant Lorin Kal Buckner and others "ran a scheme to defraud homeowners facing foreclosure." They instructed the homeowners "to make partial payments to them instead of to the mortgage company, while assuring their victims that Buckner and his company would negotiate a reduction or elimination of their mortgage payments." The defendants, however, did not truly attempt to perform services for or negotiate on behalf of the homeowners; instead, "they filed skeletal bankruptcy petitions for many homeowners [and] did so with no intention of seeking relief for them, and the petitions were dismissed. The automatic stay provided for by the Bankruptcy Code only temporarily paused the foreclosures, enabling Buckner and his co-defendants to extract additional payments from their victims before many lost their homes." "Buckner prepared many of these bankruptcy petitions for a substantial fee" but "perjuriously checked a box averring that no bankruptcy petition preparer had assisted in preparing the filings." Buckner was indicted in the Southern District of Ohio and, ultimately, a superseding indictment "narrowed his charges to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud." After representing himself at trial and advancing sovereign-citizen-style defenses, a jury convicted Buckner on both counts. He was held in criminal contempt at his sentencing hearing for improper conduct while arguing the district court lacked jurisdiction over him. That court ultimately imposed a sentence of 120 months imprisonment for the convictions, and Buckner appealed.

Judge(s):

Boggs, Clay, and Gilman

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