Accused Las Vegas squatter faces new indictment
Accused squatter Thomas Benson has been indicted again, this time over bogus “court” orders he allegedly issued against a Las Vegas police detective.
A Clark County grand jury on Thursday charged Benson and Marina Calove, who is listed as a “Superior Court” judge in at least some of his supposed rulings, with two counts of interfering with a public officer, two counts of preventing or dissuading a person from testifying or producing evidence and two counts of bribing or intimidating a witness to influence testimony.
Authorities have said that Benson, 56, follows anti-government “sovereign citizen” ideology. The indictment is the third time this year that he has been hit with criminal charges in Southern Nevada.
According to the indictment, the defendants filed papers in federal court in April that said Las Vegas police Detective Kenneth Mead, the lead detective in a criminal case pending against Benson, had been held in contempt by the Superior Court of the “united States of America (Continental)” (sic), and that Mead had been fined $500 for his work on the case.
The defendants in May also filed a “ruling and judgment” that, among other things, ordered Mead to pay a $50,000 fine.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt’s office, which has said in court papers that Benson poses “a threat of both physical violence and economic harm,” secured the indictment. Asked what possible punishments the charges carry, spokeswoman Monica Moazez said the office does not comment on pending litigation.
Benson is being held in the Clark County Detention Center and is represented by the public defender’s office. Efforts to reach a lawyer for him were unsuccessful.
The case docket does not show an attorney for Calove, who could not be reached for comment.
Benson was indicted in March on charges stemming from the alleged takeover of a 2-acre, foreclosed Las Vegas home. He also was charged in May in connection with a Las Vegas condo where he “was discovered squatting,” according to state prosecutors.
Benson has said in court papers that he is not a “U.S. person” but that he is “a sworn continental united States of America” (sic) marshal. He also filed several orders this year from a nonexistent court, records show.
He has ordered himself released from jail, and in a “cease and desist,” he ordered Senior Deputy Attorney General Jason Gunnell “to cease any and all actions” against him.
In November, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Benson, who in February sued the paper, this reporter, the state of Nevada, Clark County, the city of Las Vegas, the FBI, the Metropolitan Police Department and others. The case remains open.
In June, lawyers for Metro said in a case filing that Benson “uses fraudulent legal documents and filings in order to intimidate, harass, and coerce” public officials and others.
His filings, they added, “are not the rambling diatribes of an unsophisticated litigant” but rather “carefully crafted weapons of mass deception” that aim to harass officials in retaliation for “perceived injustices.”
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
