Florida · LienGuardAI

General information, not legal advice. Confirm current fees, forms, and deadlines on official government sites, and talk to an attorney about your situation. LienGuardAI does not file anything for you. See Legal Disclaimer & Terms of Use.

Relevant case law: After a federal drug conviction, the defendant (and later a second person) used Florida’s UCC registry to file financing statements, including a $100 million claim naming the trial judge, the prosecutor, and the U.S. Attorney as debtors. The paperwork included unsigned “security agreements” and a “Bill of Exchange” telling the U.S. Treasury to charge the money to a made-up trust account tied to a Social Security number. The United States sued. The court declared the filings null and void, ordered them removed from the registry, and permanently barred the defendants from filing similar documents against those officials without court permission. Verified. (United States v. Williams, 476 F. Supp. 2d 1368 (M.D. Fla. 2007).)

This is a plain-language summary of a published judicial opinion, not a complete report of the case. Confirm names, holdings, and procedural posture against the opinion itself.

UCC financing statements

Check if one exists

Search Florida's UCC records

Free basic search. Florida Secured Transaction Registry, branded FLORIDAUCC, LLC, operated under contract by Image API, LLC on behalf of the Dept. of State. Debtor-name search after accepting Terms of Use.

Refusal / removal authority

Florida's filing office has no non-uniform authority to refuse a fraudulent UCC financing statement before it's recorded — §679.520 limits refusal to the uniform §679.516(2) grounds.

Citations No non-uniform pre-filing authority ide…

Full citations

No non-uniform pre-filing authority identified

There is no pre-filing content/fraud review to invoke.

If it's already filed: Information statement under §679.518; civil action to void under §817.535(8); §679.625 remedies.

Real-property liens

Florida's primary dedicated tool is criminal and civil under §817.535: filing a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent instrument can be prosecuted, and a court can declare the instrument void ab initio and order it sealed or removed.

Citations FL §817.535

Full citations

Fla. Stat. §817.535

After something is recorded or filed, an affected person seeks a court order under §817.535 declaring the instrument null and void from the beginning and directing sealing/removal — this is not a clerk-level counter-refusal.

If it's already recorded: Civil damages and criminal penalties under §817.535, plus sealing/removal via court order.

Real-property records are held by the county clerk of court / recording office where the property sits.

Get notified before it happens

Florida has a free "property fraud alert" service — it emails or mails you whenever a document gets recorded against your name, so you find out right away instead of months later. Sign up for Miami-Dade Recording Alert →

Florida law (Fla. Stat. §28.47, 2024) requires all 67 county clerks to offer free e-notification — sign-up mechanics differ county to county; this is Miami-Dade's.

If the path runs through court

Florida doesn't have a self-filed administrative form for this — the verified remedy runs through a court, which generally means an attorney rather than a fill-in-the-blank document.

Action to Void a Fraudulent Instrument

§817.535 is Florida's dedicated tool for a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent instrument — and it's broad enough to cover both a real-property recording and a UCC financing statement, since this site's own UCC citations point to the same section (§817.535(8)). An affected person can get a court order declaring the instrument null and void from the beginning (void ab initio) and directing that it be sealed or removed, on top of civil damages and the underlying criminal exposure.

This generally requires an attorney. This runs through a court order, not a clerk-level fix — neither the Florida Secured Transaction Registry nor a county recording office will administratively erase a fraudulent filing under this statute without one.

Citation FL §817.535

People consulting an attorney about a filing like this often bring:

A copy of the filing, if available, and where and when it was filed or recorded (office, date, and document or instrument number)
Any notices, letters, or other correspondence about it
Records for the property or account it names, such as a deed, title, or loan papers
Notes on any contact with the filer or the filing office, with dates
This page's citations and their check dates

How this usually works in Florida

A summary of the tools Florida law and filing offices provide — general information, not instructions for your facts. Confirm current practice with the filing office and talk to an attorney about your situation.

1Florida's Secured Transaction Registry is linked on this page; county recording offices hold real-property records.
2Florida has no UCC pre-filing fraud refusal, so problems surface through searches; an information statement can put a dispute on the public record.
3§817.535 makes filing a false instrument a felony and gives an adversely affected person a civil action, including to have the instrument declared void.
4Under this scheme, neither the UCC registry vendor nor a county clerk administratively erases a fraudulent filing without a court order.

What to expect

Florida's remedies are real but court-centered after filing — plan for litigation timing rather than a same-day clerk fix. Confirm the current fee on the state's official site — filing and search fees change and are not published here.

Sources: the LienGuardAI fifty-state survey and UCC search portal review (How we verify). No dollar fee amounts are published here — always confirm the current fee on the state's own site.