A woman who espouses “sovereign citizen” beliefs has been convicted of harassing two Orange County judges by filing a fraudulent claim of a $50 million lien against their property. JARECA T. SUMTER, 38, is now in jail and facing decades in state prison.
A jury found SUMTER guilty on Sept. 3 of two counts of fraudulent use of personal identification information with fraud in excess of $100,000 and two counts of unlawful filing of false documents against real or personal property. Seminole County prosecutors Stacey Salmons, Domenick Leo and Jennie Hayes were specially assigned to try the case in Orange County to avoid any conflicts of interest, as was the Polk County circuit judge who presided.
Sumter was arrested in August 2025 after she admitted to Orange County Sheriff’s Office Agent Aaron Blankenship that she filed the lien claim online through a state website and paid the filing fee with her credit card. A lien acts as a legal claim against someone’s property, forcing the owner to settle their debt ($50 million, according to Sumter’s claim) before they can sell or refinance it.
When the investigator asked her name, the South Caroline native identified herself as an “authorized representative of the entity Jareca Sumter.” She said she filed the lien after one of the judges banned her from making further motions while representing herself in another Orange County court case. She said “the courthouse is a bank” with money that should be given to her due to the judge’s ruling.
Investigators recognized Sumter’s statements as characteristic of sovereign-citizen ideology, which argues that the legal system was secretly replaced by an illegitimate, corporate-run government. To break free from it, they rely on pseudo-legal theories and specific phrasing that – they believe – allow them to ignore driver’s licenses, court orders, and financial debts.
Meanwhile, it is a first-degree felony in Florida to fraudulently use a person’s personal identification information, including a victim’s name, if the value of the intended fraud exceeds $50,000.
If the fraud amounts to more than $100,000 – as prosecutors proved in Sumter’s case – the mandatory minimum sentence is 10 years in state prison. All told, Sumter faces up to 90 years in prison including two mandatory minimum 10-year sentences.
To convict Sumter, prosecutors had to prove to the jury that she intended to harass or harm the judges by filing the lien claim.
“The defendant’s filings, her interview with law enforcement, and her conduct in court all demonstrated her complete contempt for the judicial system,” Salmons said. “That was evidence of her motive to perpetrate a fraud and harass the judges.”
Circuit Judge Catherine Combee scheduled sentencing for Oct. 2. She ordered Sumter held without bond in the Orange County Jail pending her sentencing.