A federal grand jury has indicted Joshua M. Culver on five counts after he allegedly fabricated a Supreme Court dismissal order, forged the Chief Justice's signature, and impersonated multiple federal officials, all to make his own Indiana criminal charges go away.
Culver, who also used the alias "Maverick A. Young," was arrested in Colorado after an Indiana grand jury charged him with four counts of falsely impersonating a U.S. officer or employee and one count involving the use of a forged federal judge's signature and court seal, the New York Post reported. The Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Colorado has been appointed to represent him.
The scheme, as laid out in the indictment, stretched across at least three Indiana counties and roughly five months. It involved forged judicial documents, fake intelligence-agency letterhead, threats against local law enforcement, and a fabricated Supreme Court seal, a level of audacity that would be hard to believe if federal prosecutors hadn't put it in writing.
Culver's most brazen alleged act came on Sept. 24, 2025, when he filed a document titled "Order of Dismissal With Prejudice" in a criminal case pending against him in Grant County Superior Court, Indiana. The document bore what prosecutors say was a forged signature of Chief Justice John Roberts and a counterfeit seal of the United States Supreme Court.
The goal was straightforward: make a state criminal case disappear by dressing up a forgery as a ruling from the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court, of course, does not issue orders dismissing individual state criminal cases. The scheme relied on the hope that someone, somewhere in the Grant County courthouse, would accept the paperwork at face value.
But the forged order was not an isolated act. The indictment describes a pattern of impersonation and fabrication that began days earlier and continued for months.
On or around Sept. 19, 2025, five days before he filed the fake dismissal order, Culver allegedly contacted the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office while posing as an agent of the National Security Agency. He requested a welfare check on his biological daughter, asked for information about her location, and sought the names and information of sheriff's office employees.
When the department did not cooperate to his satisfaction, he allegedly escalated. The indictment states that Culver claimed he could take "adverse action" against the department in his purported capacity as an NSA agent. The Supreme Court has been at the center of high-profile legal disputes in recent months, including cases involving executive authority and federal enforcement powers, but Culver's alleged invocation of federal authority bore no resemblance to any legitimate proceeding.
The next day, Sept. 20, 2025, Culver allegedly called the workplace of an individual identified in the indictment only as "Individual A." He falsely identified himself as a federal agent and told the employer that Individual A was "obstructing a federal investigation of a child kidnapping." He asked the employer to intervene and pressure Individual A into cooperating.
The indictment does not specify who Individual A is or what relationship, if any, the person has to Culver or his daughter.
The alleged impersonations did not stop after September 2025. In January 2026, Culver allegedly sent a communication to the Lake County clerk directed at a Lake County Superior Court judge. In it, he portrayed himself as a "Special Master enforcing orders of the United States Supreme Court."
His demands were sweeping. He called for changes to vital records, dismissal of cases and judgments against him, and warned that if officials failed to comply, he and U.S. Marshals would make arrests for "impeding a federal agent, lying to a federal agent, and conspiracy," Fox News reported.
A Special Master is a real legal role, a court-appointed officer who handles specific tasks assigned by a judge, such as overseeing discovery or managing complex litigation. But a Special Master does not roam the country issuing threats on behalf of the Supreme Court, demanding that local clerks alter records and drop charges. The title, like the NSA badge and the forged Roberts signature, was allegedly just another costume.
The pattern of disputes between federal and state courts over executive authority has generated real legal friction in recent years. Lower courts have repeatedly clashed with the Supreme Court over the boundaries of federal power. Culver's alleged scheme, by contrast, had nothing to do with any genuine constitutional question, it was, prosecutors say, a one-man fraud operation dressed in borrowed authority.
By February 2026, Culver had allegedly invented an entirely new federal entity. He portrayed himself as the "Director of Tailored Access Operations," which the indictment describes as "a purported intelligence agency." He filed a document in Lake County Superior Court titled "OFFICIAL SENSITIVE: TAILORED ACCESS OPERATIONS (TAO) COMPLIANCE DIRECTIVE."
The document purported to bear official letterhead. It described Culver as a "federal asset" involved in multiple investigations. Its demands included dismissing the case against him with prejudice, quashing outstanding warrants, and requiring Lake County officials to cooperate with a purported "federal audit."
The indictment does not clarify whether "Tailored Access Operations" is entirely fabricated or borrows its name from any real entity. It refers to the organization only as "a purported intelligence agency." Regardless, federal prosecutors treated the filing as part of the same pattern: a defendant allegedly manufacturing fake federal authority to escape real state criminal charges.
The nature of the underlying criminal cases against Culver in Grant County and Lake County has not been disclosed in available reporting. Nor is it clear whether any Indiana court official acted on any of Culver's alleged filings before the fraud was identified. The executive branch has faced its own legal battles at the Supreme Court level over questions of authority and enforcement, but those disputes play out through legitimate legal channels, not through forged signatures and invented agencies.
Culver now faces five federal counts in the District of Indiana. Bloomberg Law reported his arrest date as Aug. 21. He was taken into custody in Colorado, far from the Indiana courthouses where he allegedly filed his fabricated paperwork.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Supreme Court's Public Information Office, the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Colorado, and the Justice Department for comment. No responses have been reported.
Several questions remain open. It is unclear whether the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office carried out the welfare check Culver requested while posing as an NSA agent. It is unknown whether any court in Indiana took action based on the forged documents before the scheme unraveled. And Culver's plea status has not been reported.
The case also raises a practical concern for courts across the country. If a man operating under an alias can walk a forged Supreme Court order into a county courthouse and file it in an active criminal case, the question is not just whether this particular fraud was caught, it is how many similar attempts might not be. Court systems that handle high-stakes legal disputes over federal authority depend on the assumption that the documents in their files are genuine. Culver's alleged scheme tested that assumption directly.
When a defendant's best legal strategy is forging the Chief Justice's name on a fake order, it tells you everything you need to know about the strength of his actual case.
