From the confines of a Florida prison, Vincent Craig Williams types screeds attacking the Pinellas County legal system.

In one document, Williams wrote that Pinellas Clerk of the Circuit Court Ken Burke should immediately release him — a "flesh and blood mortal being" — from prison. Williams, 57, is serving 20 years for attempted murder.

In another, he claimed Burke was liable for $50 million.

Williams' filings are "false and fraudulent," according to a recent lawsuit the clerk's office filed against the prisoner. Burke is suing to have the phony documents removed from the court system.

"I can't speak for the person who filed this. I assume he has a lot of time in his hands," Burke said. "It really is just a nuisance of our time to have to face these items."

Burke's case has played out across the country and Florida, experts say, as those affiliated with the sovereign citizen movement retaliate against public officials using a court system they don't believe in.

Sovereign citizens also don't believe that local, state and federal laws apply to them. In the past two years, the Florida Attorney General's Office has defended 21 judges, prosecutors, clerks, and other officials against fraudulent liens filed against them.

In the Pinellas-Pasco circuit, about two legal actions have been filed against judges every year over the past decade.

"It's a pretty common tactic," said Ryan Lenz, a senior writer at the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies sovereign citizenry. "It's called paper terrorism for a reason because it puts someone in a state of financial terror that is meant to harm them."

The Southern Poverty Law Center described sovereign citizens as a "strange subculture" of antigovernment activists that can include both white supremacists and black separatists.

The movement has also been linked to violence. In 2010, while on their way home to Clearwater, sovereign citizen Jerry Kane Jr., 45, and his 16-year-old son, Joseph, ambushed and killed two Arkansas police officers, then died in a gunfight with police in a Walmart parking lot.

"Sovereign citizenry is an intoxicating ideology, especially if you find yourself under water financially," Lenz said. "It is an answer for why you're in trouble and it is an explanation for why the system is stacked against you."

Which is why, he added, many sovereign citizens use bogus liens to go after public officials they believe have wronged them.

"False or fraudulent liens can lower a property owner's credit rating, prevent them from taking out loans and force them to pay expensive legal filings," Florida Attorney General spokesman Whitney Ray wrote in an email. "What's often worse is the time and effort it can take to remove the lien and restore a victim's reputation and credit rating."

In 2013, the Florida Legislature passed a law that permits people who are named in such filings to request that clerk's offices expunge those records. It also created criminal penalties for filing false documents, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. In the past two years, according to statewide data, about 25 people have been charged with this crime.

In Pinellas County alone, at least three lawsuits have been filed in the past five months.

In July, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Thomas Minkoff, who was presiding over a foreclosure, sued the homeowner in that case after she filed a "criminal complaint" that alleged Minkoff violated several constitutional laws and had to pay $2.4 million in fines.

The homeowner, Leslie Armstrong, was later arrested on felony charges of criminal use "under color of law" and "through simulated legal process." Armstrong, 59, told an officer she filed the documents because "Minkoff had really stuck it to us," according to court records. She and her attorney could not be reached for comment.

In October, Edward Oberwise, a sexual offender sentenced to 20 years in prison, was sued after he filed a "security claim" against 11 current and former appellate judges, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe, and an appeals court clerk who died last year. The claims stated they each owed Oberwise $514,000. Tharpe presided over Oberwise's criminal case. Oberwise, 46, was convicted of lewd and lascivious battery in 2009.

Burke and Pinellas County attorney James Bennett sued Williams in November after he filed records them last year.

It's unclear what connection, if any, Oberwise, Williams, and Armstrong have to the sovereign movement.

These phony documents continue to be filed across Florida because state laws don't allow clerks to examine the content of official records beyond checking for signatures and the proper filing fees.

Some states have amended their laws to let clerks inspect filings more closely, said Lenz.

But Burke said any changes made to access of the courts should be done cautiously.

"So how do you know something is nonsense?" the clerk said. "It's very delicate. Probably, if it was a simple answer, we would have resolved it already."

Contact Laura C. Morel at lmorel@tampabay.com. Follow @lauracmorel.