Puget Sound Agricultural Society

[Shoonra]

Some months ago I asked if anyone had any info about a purported auto insurance outfit called PUGET SOUND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, LTD (or in some publications, PUGET'S SOUND ....), abbreviated PSASL. This outfit claimed to have a "Christian" and legitimate (and cheaper) substitute for conventional auto insurance by means of what appeared to be repeatedly passing the hat among its "members" whenever any of them had to pay for damages.

I have come across some information about the PSASL.

Glover v. P.S.A.S.L., et al., (ND Calif 6/20/05), only found on Lexis. A driver, Wood, had purchased the PSASL's coverage and was at fault in a major auto accident that killed one person and crippled another. He was sued by the representatives of the two accident victims .... and PSASL, instead of defending him in court as an insurance company is expected to do, dummied up. Wood, without a defense, was crushed in the lawsuits. (PSASL sends its members a packet of canned arguments about the jurisdiction of whatever court it might be, etc., all of which have already failed in numerous cases.) The best Wood could do is sign over to the successful plaintiffs all his rights to PSASL benefits. The plaintiffs then sued PSASL for breach of insurance contract and a number of other things. Even when it was the defendant, PSASL failed to show up in court, and it lost by default, with a judgment against it for Twenty Million dollars.

This was followed by the plaintiffs trying to chase down PSASL and especially PSASL's money. They finally had a writ served on PSASL founder & CEO, James Sidney Kalfsbeek, of Arbuckle, California. Kalfsbeek tried to avoid testifying by sending the plaintiffs one of those Bills of Exchange that have been described elsewhere on this website - purporting to be payable by the US Treasury for more than $25 Million - which the banks promptly rejected as bogus.

Kalfsbeek eventually was compelled to testify at a debtor's exam and he swore that the PSASL money -- but only $160 Thousand -- was "in an unknown Canadian bank account that had been frozen". The judge issued an order requiring PSASL to transfer this supposedly frozen account to the plaintiffs; Kalfsbeek didn't hesitate to countersign the instructions to the Canadian bank .... because he already had emptied this account although he failed to mention this in court proceedings. In response to further court orders, Kalfsbeek swore that PSASL was bankrupt and that the money in the Canadian account had been distributed to pay older claims against the insurance fund. But he failed to comply with court orders to produce the business records that showed how this money had been distributed.

The plaintiffs thereupon sued PSASL and Kalfsbeek and some of his associates in PSASL for, among other things, violating the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act. Kalfsbeek responded by sending the plaintiffs a document title "Notice of Acceptance -- Non-Negotiable" which called itself a "Bonded Bill of Exchange Order" for $195 Thousand, and resembling the previous BOE and was also worthless. The plaintiffs moved for default judgments against PSASL, Kalfsbeek and others. In this decision the court analyzed the situation and decided that default judgments were justified. In particular that Kalfsbeek and others had not defaulted because of "excusable" errors but had failed to defend or comply with court orders as a deliberate decision. Judgment in favor of the plaintiffs was filed on July 6, 2005.

In Texas, in the case of Murphy v. State (Texas App. 11/13/03) which is on both Westlaw and Lexis, Danny Royce Murphy was charged with violating the state law requiring insurance coverage and with the use of a "counterfeit insurance document", because at a traffic stop Murphy showed the cops his PSASL card as proof of insurance. Since PSASL "is not authorized to conduct business within the State of Texas [and] it is questionable whether [PSASL] exists at all", Murphy was criminally charged.

Murphy started the case with a court-appointed lawyer but refused to listen to his advice. Murphy used some of the arguments I've seen mentioned on this website; he denied the court had jurisdiction over him, that the Code of Criminal Procedure applied only to corporations and not human beings, etc. These arguments were each rejected by the court. For example, Murphy admitted he had no legal authority for his argument about the Code applying only to corporations.

The arresting officer testified that when he asked to see Murphy's proof of insurance, Murphy first launched into a speech on why he thought he was not required to have either a registration, license, or insurance as required by state law. This was sufficient to justify the jury's opinion that Murphy knew the PSASL card and pretended insurance coverage was bogus. The appeals court affirmed the trial court conviction, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to disturb that decision.

The same Danny Royce Murphy has bounced in and out of criminal courts for his attitude that the traffic laws apply only to other people.

From news reports I found out that James Sidney Kalfsbeek, age 67, was arrested in July 2005, in California (along with some other executives of PSASL) on federal charges including (among others) conspiracy to defraud the govt, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. This time Kalfsbeek hired a lawyer. The case, as far as I can find, is still churning around and Kalfsbeek is not yet in prison (US v. Kalfsbeek, et al., E.D.Calif. nr. 2:05-CR-128). The FBI is going to bring in as witnesses people who were ripped off by PSASL.