The Unlawful Conversion of an American Living Man

He was born a free American on July 1, 1951, in Midland County, Michigan, a living man with every right to liberty and sovereignty. But the moment his parents registered his birth, something strange happened. Without his consent, without anyone asking him, his name—Robert Edward Broe—was turned into a piece of commercial property. It was recorded as a “trade name,” but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Somewhere along the line, his name was mistakenly registered as a commercial vessel, a ship sailing on the high seas of corporate law. And just like that, a free man became cargo. Imagine a ship that never leaves the dock but is still considered “offshore.” That’s the trick.

When you’re born, the government creates a legal fiction in your name—a trust, a corporation, a vessel—and then places that fiction under the jurisdiction of maritime law, which is the law of the sea. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never been on a boat. Your legal identity is now a foreign situs trust, operating in a jurisdiction that exists nowhere on land.

Robert Broe discovered that his own name had been turned into “ROBERT EDWARD BROE,” a non-combatant commercial vessel, structured as a Foreign Grantor Trust. And he had never signed a single paper agreeing to any of it.