The Kinney family trace their issues back to 2002, when they took out a loan against their home for legal fees surrounding their son, William III. The “Kinney Family” website describes this incident lightly, noting that “William III was taken to prison at the young age of 17 for an automobile accident.”

In fact, William III pleaded guilty to a felony hit-and-run, third-degree assault and what Oregon Live described as the “juvenile equivalent” of “criminally negligent homicide.” He was driving with a suspended license and speeding when he ran a stop sign and hit a car, ultimately killing an 83-year-old man and injuring his wife.

These details are not noted in the “Kinney Family” website.

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In one pleading from their first federal lawsuit, filed November 2018, the Kinneys admitted that they stopped making payments on their second mortgage loan in January 2017 upon receiving payment notices from two separate mortgage servicing companies. Banks often sell their loans to service companies and as a result, the loan can change hands.

Rather than working to straighten out the confusion, which is what homeowners typically do, the Kinneys appear to have used the situation as a reason to stop making payments altogether.

The same pleading later details a notice that the Kinney’s sent the lender. In this notice, the Kinneys claimed that the lender did not have jurisdiction in the “Oregon Republic” to foreclose on their home. The Kinneys also claimed that they were not U.S. citizens.

The notice describes William Kinney as “Mickey Pharaoh” and his wife Julie as “Jew-el Empress of Compassion.” Their son, who represented the family after multiple lawyers reportedly turned them down, goes by “Heir Apparent.”

These elaborate signatures were likely meant to further bolster claims that the family are an indigenous and sovereign people, and therefore somehow exempt from the foreclosure.

An amended complaint in that same case added allegations of genocide and claimed that the foreclosure process was a violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.