The buyer who filed a lien on himself

A UCC-1 filed by the buyer, against the buyer, is not a lien on the property. It is a receipt for a kit they bought online. Get it terminated before the title company decides what it means.

The kit tells people to file a financing statement naming themselves as "secured party" over their own name in capital letters, then stamp their creditor mail "accepted for value" and "without prejudice." The theory is that this discharges their debts. It discharges nothing. The debts stay, the late marks stay, and the filing sits in the Secretary of State's records under the buyer's name until someone terminates it.

Danny, who fixes air conditioners, put it this way: you can stamp the compressor all you want.

Where it lands on your desk is the title search or the fraud screen. A self-filed UCC-1 reads to an underwriter as either identity confusion or the sovereign-citizen pattern, and some lenders decline the file on the pattern alone. If the buyer also filed against a creditor, a collector or a government employee, that is a false lien, and against a federal employee it is 18 U.S.C. § 1521.

Ask one question: "Did you file anything with the Secretary of State this year?" If yes, get the filing number.

Then three steps, in order.

Have the buyer file a UCC-3 termination on their own filing. It is a one-page form, usually under thirty dollars, and takes effect on filing.

If they filed against anyone else, stop. That is a lawyer's problem, not a loan file's, and you do not want the origination on it.

Send the buyer to Calvin's explanation so they stop paying for the next module.

The collections that started this are still there, and they have real doors: validation under the FDCPA inside thirty days, and a dispute for any field the buyer can prove wrong. Both work under the buyer's own name. Nothing in the kit does.

Eight files, read line by line, and a list of what to leave alone. Send the buyer before the second filing: the referral takes twelve minutes.