A Colorado man accused of forging Chief Justice John Roberts' signature on a fake Supreme Court order and posing as an NSA agent to erase his own Indiana criminal charges made his first federal court appearance in Denver after his arrest last Friday. Joshua M. Culver, who has also gone by the name Maverick A. Young, now faces a five-count federal indictment covering four counts of falsely impersonating a federal officer and one count of forging a federal judge's signature and court seal.
The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in July 2026 but stayed sealed until Culver's arrest, according to Muck Rack. As reported by Cleveland.com, federal authorities say Culver used fabricated federal authority to influence local officials and legal proceedings across multiple Indiana counties, and that a federal public defender has been appointed to represent him.
A Forged Supreme Court Seal Aimed at Grant County
According to Breitbart News, the fake document at the center of the case, dated September 24, 2025, and titled Order of Dismissal With Prejudice, was submitted to Grant County Superior Court in Indiana specifically to try to wipe out pending state theft charges against Culver. Federal prosecutors allege the document included a counterfeit Supreme Court seal and a forged version of Roberts' signature. Culver represented himself in the filing as a special master acting on behalf of the U.S. Supreme Court, and he warned that court officials could face arrest if his demands were not met.
Culver's alleged scheme did not stop with the Supreme Court forgery. Court officials in Lake County, Indiana were pressured separately, the same case notes, after Culver had already been charged locally in January 2026 with threatening and harassing a judge in Lake County Superior Court, according to the ABA Journal. That prior state case became part of the legal trouble Culver allegedly tried to erase using fabricated federal credentials.
Posing as an NSA Hacking Chief
Days before the forged Supreme Court order surfaced, Culver allegedly contacted the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office in Lafayette, Indiana on September 19, 2025, claiming to be an NSA agent seeking a welfare check to locate his biological daughter while threatening “adverse action” against the department, per CyberScoop. The very next day, Culver allegedly called the workplace of a person identified in court filings as Individual A, claiming to be a federal agent investigating a child-kidnapping case and threatening the employee with felony arrest if they refused to cooperate, according to WFIN.
In February 2026, prosecutors say Culver escalated further, submitting a fraudulent document titled Tailored Access Operations Compliance Directive to Lake County Superior Court. In it, he claimed to be the Director of TAO and designated himself a federal asset in an effort to force case dismissals and quash warrants, according to WHMI. CyberScoop notes a detail that undercuts the fabrication: the NSA's Tailored Access Operations, once its elite offensive cyber-hacking division, was formally renamed Computer Network Operations back in 2017, meaning Culver's court filings invoked a title that had not existed in nearly a decade.
Federal Charges and Prison Exposure
UPI reports that the federal indictment lays out four counts of falsely impersonating an officer of the United States and one count tied to forging a federal judge's signature and court seal, spanning the full range of personas Culver allegedly assumed, including NSA agent, TAO director, special master, and Chief Justice Roberts himself. Under 18 U.S. Code § 912, falsely pretending to be a federal officer carries up to three years in prison, a fine, or both for each count. Forging the signature of a federal judge or counterfeiting a federal court seal under 18 U.S. Code § 505 carries an additional maximum of five years, a fine, or both.
Taken together, the statutory exposure across all five counts totals up to 17 years in prison. Requests for comment from federal officials and the U.S. Supreme Court had not produced immediate responses, Cleveland.com reported. Bloomberg Law first reported details surrounding Culver's arrest, which set off the unsealing of the indictment that had been sitting since July.
A Daughter, Theft Charges, and a Pattern of Interference
Threaded through the scheme, according to the underlying case details, was Culver's stated goal of obtaining information about his biological daughter, an aim he allegedly pursued through the fake NSA welfare-check request and the threats against Individual A's employer. At the same time, prosecutors say Culver was working to have his pending Indiana criminal case, including the theft charges in Grant County and the harassment charges in Lake County, dismissed outright through manufactured federal paperwork. Culver is accused of demanding court action in his favor and warning that officials who ignored him could themselves face arrest under his invented authority.
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