Part of my job is to deal with people who can't or won't pay their debts. I hear plenty of genuine hard-luck stories from the former, and I get plenty of green ink from the latter.

A year or so ago I started receiving letters that were odder than usual. The writer would be happy to pay "any lawful debt", but only if I provide "validation of the debt: the actual accounting" and "a hand-signed invoice in accordance with the Bills of Exchange Act (1882)". I replied to each, answering the questions as best I could. My replies resulted in further letters claiming that, because I had not provided the requested information, I had entered into a "tacit contract" that required me to pay £1,000 for each further letter that I sent to the writer.

Once you receive a few letters in identical terms, you suspect an internet campaign. I Googled a couple of the recurring phrases and found Getoutofdebtfree.org, the site run by Jon Witterick. Witterick was given space in Comment is free this week as part of the Occupy takeover. He used that platform to promote the supposed debt avoidance service that his site offers. Witterick uses a few freeman-on-the-land tropes to support his claims, including the Bills of Exchange Act and fractional reserve banking. As I've explained in detail elsewhere, his statements about the law are utterly wrong.

Supporters of the freeman approach would probably respond to my debunking (and that of others such as the barristers Adam Wagner and Carl Gardner, and the bloggers Ian Chard and Benjamin Gray) by saying that it works, and that they have the success stories to prove it. You can read those success stories on Getofdebtfree.org, and on other freeman sites like fmotl.com.

But their "successes" are nothing of the sort. I can say with some confidence that sending the letters provided by Getofdebtfree.org has never led in and of itself to a debt being written off. It's true that some debts are not pursued after a certain point. The sum may be too small to justify the cost of litigation, or the debtor may be too difficult to find or have no money or assets. So if a debt isn't litigated it's because it was never going to be. Saying that it's because of template letters is like saying that your cold was cured by crystal healing: you were going to get better anyway, with or without the magical intervention.

The Getoutofdebtfree strategy might give lenders pause, of course, because litigating against awkward characters isn't much fun. But given how flimsy the freeman legal arguments are, the pause needn't be long. I've seen a transcript of a hearing in which a debtor tried to rely on the freeman defence. It was over as soon as the judge asked (I can imagine the withering tone), "Are you planning to persist in this defence, Mr Jones?" The least you can hope for from following this strategy is more debt and a ruined credit rating. If the debt's big enough, and you're not in genuine financial difficulties, you'll get a county court judgment as well.

Take the philosophy too far and the consequences could be worse. In December 2010, a man was arrested after using freeman-on-the-land arguments to try and avoid paying council tax, and earlier this year Elizabeth Watson was jailed for contempt in the Victoria Haigh case, in part because she claimed that as a freeman she was not under the jurisdiction of the court.

Even in good economic times, many people struggle with debt, and these are very far from good times. I can understand the feeling that lenders pushed easy credit to people who could never repay it, and I won't try to defend aggressive debt collection tactics. But defaulting is not the easy option that Jon Witterick makes it out to be. There is no magic bullet for debt problems, not even (despite its name) Getoutofdebtfree. On the contrary, there is every chance that such strategies will make things worse, for the debtor and (through higher credit costs, for everyone else) the wider economy.