January 15, 2011 - 3:00AM
HE targets the most vulnerable - people fighting custody disputes and bankruptcy proceedings - as well as Aboriginal communities pushing land rights claims.
David Wynn Miller, an American, rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few weeks teaching his ''truth language'' or ''syntax language'' at seminars across Australia.
He has disrupted several court cases in NSW, including one recently in Lismore in which a man was about to go on trial in the NSW District Court on serious child sexual assault charges.
While a jury waited to be empanelled in November, the accused, John Jarrett, repeatedly told the court, on Miller's advice, that the indictment was ''not written in the correct sentence structure communication syntax language'' and thus the case should be struck out.
Lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service stepped in but several hours later Jarrett was ordered to undergo psychiatric testing. The trial is yet to proceed.
The 30-odd ''law students'' with Miller in the public gallery - all of whom had been at his six-day, $1400 course on the Gold Coast - hailed it a victory. Lawyers present, including the barrister Jarrett had sacked, were stunned.
''The impression I got is [Miller is] doing it all the time … he's creating a great following,'' the barrister, Sam Di Carlo, says. ''This guy should be reported.''
Miller, 62, a retired tool and die welder, is based in Milwaukee and claims to have invented his own language in 1988, based on mathematics and maritime law. He calls the English language a ''fiction''. He writes in capital letters, with an abundance of punctuation, and calls himself the ''king of Hawaii''.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Jared Lee Loughner, the man charged after last weekend's shootings in Tucson, Arizona, was believed to have been inspired by Miller's teachings because of a recent series of YouTube rants he filmed about governments using grammar to control the population. Miller says this is ''ridiculous''.
Authorities have been dealing with Miller's courtroom antics in Canada and the US for more than a decade but he has more recently set his sights on Australia and New Zealand.
In 2001, the Miami Herald reported that Miller had been banned from entering Canada for two years after several cases in which judges had jailed people for contempt of court after they had attempted to use his ''truth language'' to defend tax evasion charges.
Last July and August he toured 10 Australian cities and regional centres including Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Perth and Brisbane.
He barged into a Family Court matter in Sydney last year in which a couple were fighting the Department of Community Services for custody of several of their children, and attempted to file 40 pages of gobbledegook.
The couple had spent more than $2000 to fly their barrister from Brisbane to Sydney for a session with Miller. ''They were convinced that Wynn Miller had all the magic solutions,'' said the barrister, who did not want to be named. ''[Miller's teaching] was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.''
When DOCS returned the children to the parents two weeks later, Miller's followers lauded him.
The NSW Land and Environment Court last April endured almost two hours of Miller's ravings on grammar and maritime law.
''I'll give you a little secret,'' he told Justice Malcolm Craig. ''Every word that starts in the English language with a vowel, a, e, i, o and u, and followed by two consonants is a word that means no contract … All paper is a vessel in sea of space …''
Miller was representing an engineer, Masood Falamaki, whose long property battle with Wollongong City Council has left him bankrupt.
In December 2009, Miller unsuccessfully applied to the Federal Magistrates Court to appear as an expert witness on ''syntax fraud'' for Falamaki.
The Federal Magistrate Michael Lloyd-Jones dismissed Miller and his supporters as a ''linguistic cult''.
Falamaki is reported to have paid Miller $5000 and says ''people like David Wynn Miller are challenging the judiciary'.
No other people are brave enough to do that.''
Gary Jackson, 52, says the Gold Coast seminar he attended was ''probably the best money I've ever spent''. He says the class of about 40 consisted of people who had travelled from Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and North Queensland, including about six who had lost their houses.
Jackson, who turned to Miller after his house was repossessed last year, says Miller is helping him prepare a breach of contract case in the Queensland Supreme Court using ''syntax language''.
''I would back David Wynn Miller any day rather than one of those snaky solicitors,'' he said.
There are concerns, however, within the Aboriginal community about Miller's influence.
''He's trying to suck us into this quantum language stuff as well because he's going around the place and representing people in court,'' says the veteran Aboriginal rights campaigner Michael Eckford.
One activist, Mark McMurtrie, is listed on court documents as also representing Falamaki.
McMurtrie told the Herald: ''I am neither a student nor supporter of [Miller's] language and law. As a sovereign tribal man of this continent I view his ramblings as relevant to my people.''
Colleen Lloyd, an American who was a partner of Miller's for five years, told the Herald she came under his spell ''during a vulnerable time when I was suffering mercury poisoning and extreme poverty''.
She says people followed him like a ''messiah-like figure''.
Miller's response to several questions via email was mostly incomprehensible. When asked about his Brisbane course next month, which costs $1800 for six days, he wrote (in capital letters): ''When people ask questions on the 'deed of trust' as the trustee and cross-subject-questions, I give them the operational-answers that may help for them to do their own 'learning-search'.
When asked if he had ever been refused a visa to Australia, he wrote: ''No, I hold casino cards and gamble all over the country.'' Regarding the Aboriginal community, he said he was helping ''originees'' to claim back land.
The flyer for the Brisbane course says: ''If you learn how to syntax your contracts you will learn self security. Protect yourself from being harvested.''
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/messiahlike-figure-is-doing-own-harvesting-20110114-19r9v.html
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