Britain's shadow bureaucracy exposed

The use of legal non-entities for revenue enforcement is a widespread public fraud

I am preparing my defence strategy against a malicious prosecution by Cumbria Constabulary for a minor parking offence (obstruction of the road), and the more serious matter of failing to provide driver information (Section 172 offence). The more I look into the matter of unlawful revenue enforcement by public bodies, as opposed to legitimate law enforcement, the clearer the patterns are that cross over the different cases that I am involved in. The following may be a little dry compared to my other writing, but my job is to expose the fraud, and document how the system protects itself as part of an interconnected web of corruption — so that others don’t fall victim to the scam.

As DOGE is demonstrating in the USA with the USAID scandal, central government is plenty capable of laundering vast sums of money on illegitimate causes. Many are asking pointed questions about the wider context — the securitisation of the public and their assets via registration and legal fictions, the levying of income and property taxes based on the denial of innate civil rights, and the abuse of police and judicial functions for ends other than public protection. The bigger picture of debt slavery and financial abuse is beyond this one article — I am here to give testimony to my own lived experience and to highlight the common themes, so others can see through the deception.

A pattern of fraud: How legal non-entities deceive the public

The specific trick that keeps recurring in my own work is the creation of legal non-entities to shield public bodies from accountability for their unlawful (yet very profitable) actions. The “shadow bureaucracy” is an interconnected network of quasi-legal entities, each operating outside lawful authority, yet often backed by government departments but lacking statutory legitimacy. Their purpose is revenue generation under the guise of law enforcement, achieved through misrepresentation and collusion with both judicial and non-judicial bodies. This is a polite way of saying that the modern state is one giant extortion racket whose cover has been blown.

To bring it all to life, let us take the three most noteworthy causes that I have been involved in:

• BBC/Capita (for Television Licensing),

• Durham County Council (for Council Tax), and now

• Cumbria Constabulary (for Fixed Penalty Notices).

Each of these has constructed a “presentation layer” to face the public that obfuscates who they are really interacting with, and frustrates their ability to seek remedy via the legal system. Taking them in turn…

The TV Licensing shell game: BBC & Capita’s collusion

The BBC and Capita use the “TV Licensing” trade name as a shell game, sending revenue to the BBC, and liabilities to Capita. They commit criminal fraud by presenting “TV Licensing” as a legal person, for instance in the copyright notice on their website. I sued “TV Licensing” and the courts ignored all arguments about fraud and standing, refusing to rule on these matters. Any correspondence to “TV Licensing” goes to a synthetic address with a unique postcode, not a real postal address you can turn up at and knock on the door. As of my last interaction with them, no registered address is on their correspondence, as that would give away who carried the can (i.e. the BBC) — a corporation obligated to disclose such details.

The extortion that the BBC engages in is to threaten householders to make a statement about ownership of a television, where none is lawfully required, under threat of a house visit by one of their heavies. This is a form of forced labour, and there is no such thing as a trivial kind of slavery. The captured Magistrates’ Court system processes punishments for infractions of this telly tax, where no legal challenge to the legitimacy of the system as a whole is permitted or heard. The innate bias of local and county courts in favour of establishment institutions erects an almost insurmountable hurdle for ordinary people to expose the underlying identity fraud, and repulse the coercive behaviour.

Durham County Council and the CDOS Scam

Durham County Council (DCC) use County Durham Outreach and Support (CDOS) to enforce “debt” for council tax. The term “debt” is in scare quotes as they use linguistic trickery to reclassify untaxed (home) “inhabitants” as taxed (commercial property) “residents”, where in reality there is no lawful obligation to pay. Then fake courts, with a Justice of the Peace acting ultra vires, rubber stamp these demands, using summonses issued by the council posing as a court. The collection of the debt has no paperwork to evidence any real court order, as it was not the court’s authority that made the order. A whole pile of laws on debt enforcement are then broken as the public are extorted with menaces.

I will write a more detailed article soon on the exact composition of the criminal fraud involved, but the summary is that CDOS refers to DCC as its “client”, implying legal separation, where there is none. CDOS claims membership of an industry association, but since it lacks legal personhood, this is also a fraud. A PO Box is used as the only means of contact, no real man or woman ever adds their name to correspondence or signs anything, and the relationship with Durham County Council is hidden. When I reported the blackmail and fraud to Durham Constabulary I was turned away at the police station, and any complaints at failure to investigate were summarily dismissed.

Cumbria Constabulary’s Central Ticket Office: policing for profit

In the case of Cumbria Constabulary, they are conducting revenue enforcement operations, putting fixed penalty notices on vehicles as part of entrapment operations that are fatally flawed should they ever be subjected to legal scrutiny. To shield themselves from accountability they use “Central Ticket Office” as their synthetic identity, putting the logo, URL, and Chief Constable name on correspondence, but not the actual name of the force or a registered office. Again, a PO Box is the only means of access. Once more, no full name of any official involved, or legible signature, is ever offered. When I wrote to the Chief Constable asking for the correspondence to be authenticated, I got no response; of course the force doesn’t want to put in writing it authorises a criminal fraud to raise revenue.

Collusion of courts, councils, and corporations

The pattern is clear — “TV Licensing”, “Country Durham Outreach and Support”, “Central Ticket Office” — all are “not even legal fictions”. These shadow bureaucracy non-entities allow their parent bodies to hide behind opaque correspondence and accountability barriers. These faux institutional entities claim the legitimacy of being public sector institutions acting under law, while actually being private revenue enforcers operating outside the law. What this all circumstantially suggests is that there may be concealed incorporation going on, as these are private commercial operations pretending to be public officials, directing revenues to unattributable ends.

Again to summarise:

• TV Licensing poses as a government enforcement agency but is actually a private contractor. It uses intimidating letters filled with legal-sounding threats to conduct “inspections” that lack legal standing, while relying on voluntary compliance based on trickery. This misrepresents the law, as engagement with licensing is not legally required unless watching live broadcasts or BBC iPlayer.

• County Durham Outreach and Support enables Durham County Council to act as a private debt collection agency under the guise of local authority enforcement. CDOS serves fake legal notices to intimidate people into paying fines they do not lawfully owe, and works with magistrates to issue liability orders without due process.

• Central Ticket Office of Cumbria Constabulary operates under the false pretence of being a law enforcement body to issue “notices” with no legal standing designed to resemble official legal demands. In truth, this “legalese artwork” is only an offer to contract and settle with a legal non-entity. This exploits public ignorance by implying legal compulsion where none exists.

These are not the only examples. The Northampton Traffic Processing Centre, Traffic Penalty Tribunal, and HM Revenue & Customs also use captive tribunals to perform revenue enforcement that is unlawful under the strict letter of the law, especially constitutional law. Some are more transparent than others; while my adjudicator at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal had “no room” to consider the lawfulness of her decision, at least she had a name and face, and was accountable for her actions. It was still theft, and just because Parliament told you to steal from the travelling public didn’t make it moral or lawful.

How they break the law with impunity

How does this all continue unchecked? Our judicial system works for the bankers, not the people:

• The Northampton Traffic Enforcement Centre is a bureaucratic processing centre, not a court of law, so it issues judgments without a judicial hearing. These bulk processing methods to rubber-stamp fines and penalties ensure that no challenge to the legality of the fine or forfeit is possible. As such, it is an end-run against the protections of the Bill of Rights, and constitutes treason.

• The Traffic Penalty Tribunal is an administrative body masquerading as a judicial authority. All decisions are made by administrative clerks, not judges under oath, with no adherence to legal due process. This denies appellants the right to cross-examine evidence or challenge procedures under the wider body of law. It offers an arbitration function without disclosing its limited remit in advance.

• Magistrates’ Courts are used for rubber-stamping revenue enforcement, de facto being debt collection offices, while claiming to be de jure courts of law. They bulk approve of warrants, fines, and penalties without individual case examination, which is a dereliction of judicial duty. It is routine practice to deny defendants the right to a proper hearing or legal defence, especially if you raise issues of jurisdiction, standing, or remit.

All of these quasi-legal revenue enforcement entities, colluding with captive quasi-legal tribunal functions, violate the principle of separation of powers, as they blur or conflate the interests of claimant and adjudicator. They hoax the public into presuming identity and authority where there is none, using “implied contract or consent” (which only relates to corporations) to trick ordinary people into paying. No lawful contract exists, but they rely on public ignorance to extract payment. Threats of escalating fines, court action, and enforcement agents create compliance through fear.

As hinted earlier, this is a denial of constitutional rights, as debts are enforced, and properties taken, without any proper judicial review. There is a reversal of the presumption of innocence—guilt is assumed unless challenged. The very essence of TV Licensing, CDOS, Central Ticket office, and their ilk is obstruction of due process — refusing people the right to due process in law and a proper hearing. These ultra vires departments are engaged in constructive fraud, a deception designed to extract payment without legal basis. This is a crime:

• Fraud Act 2006 s2 — Fraud by false representation by misrepresenting their authority.

• Fraud Act 2006 s3 — Fraud by failing to disclose information by concealing the fact that their demands are not legally binding.

• Fraud Act 2006 s4 — Fraud by abuse of position by collusion with courts to extract unlawful payments.

• Administration of Justice Act 1970 s40 — Prohibition of false representations for debt collection by sending misleading notices that resemble court orders.

There are also violations of:

• European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 6 – Right to a fair trial by denying individuals the right to proper judicial review.

• European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 1 of Protocol 1 – Protection of property by unlawful confiscation of assets via enforcement agents without proper due process.

• Data Protection Act 2018 (GDPR Compliance) by unlawful processing of personal data for enforcement purposes without consent.

• Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 by failure to disclose proper registration details and proactively prevent fraud.

The postal service loophole: Is any of this legally served?

The final part of the fraud is how all correspondence is sent via unregistered mail using windowed envelopes. Mail that only displays the recipient’s address through a window envelope raises questions about whether it is technically addressed to an individual under strict legal definitions. Under Universal Postal Convention (UPU Standards) the addressee must be clearly identifiable on the outside of the envelope for mail to be legally considered addressed to them. Under s84 of the Postal Services Act 2000, it is an offence to open a postal packet that is not addressed to you without reasonable excuse!

If the sender claims you were “notified”, yet you were never explicitly named on the envelope, then there is ample room to argue that you had no legal obligation to open it. Potentially none of these notices are properly legally served as a result, especially if there is no verifiable proof of receipt (such as hand delivery). Shadow bureaucracies concealed behind PO boxes via windowed envelopes create reasonable doubt over whether any document was legally served. There is a lack of case law in this area, but a single test case could invalidate practically all administrative fines and penalties going back for decades — an existential threat to revenue enforcement.

Fighting back against the shadow bureaucracy

So what to do about it? Well, if they are acting as agents of foreign powers in stealing from the British public under the colour of law, then that puts them under military jurisdiction, and our job is to just wait for these crime cartels to be taken down in a post-Covid world. In the meantime, our best defence is to dispel ignorance. That means taking summaries like this, and passing them on to others who are affected. Once we see the same scam recurring over and over, it becomes less intimidating to confront it. They can only continue as long as the corrupt mechanics are kept in the darkness, so our task is to shine a light into the shadow bureaucracy.