Mahan also found Rice guilty of four charges of failure to appear in court that could result in a minimum of 40 years in prison stemming from nearly two years as a fugitive before his arrest after a 10-hour armed standoff with FBI agents in December at his home in Seligman, Ariz.

Rice remains in federal custody pending sentencing Oct. 24. U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said Rice could face decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines on the money laundering and conspiracy charges.

Rice and co-defendant Samuel Davis were indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2009, following a three-year undercover FBI investigation involving agents posing as businessmen.

Rice insisted that Davis was an informant for the FBI but told Mahan he couldn’t prove it.

Rice’s only defense witness, Thomas Schaults, 58, was handcuffed and arrested in court Tuesday on outstanding traffic tickets after he left the witness stand in a failed bid to testify. Mahan ruled that Schaults had no relevant information to provide in the case

Rice tried to persuade the judge to let Schaults testify, but Mahan cut him off, accusing him of speaking “gobbledygook” and “gibberish.”

Authorities later identified Schaults as a sovereign citizens leader. The Review-Journal reported he had a Pennsylvania driver’s license in his possession when he was taken to the Clark County jail in Las Vegas.

Davis, 57, whom authorities have identified as a sovereign citizens leader from Idaho, pleaded guilty in March 2011 and was sentenced last November to almost five years in federal prison and ordered to repay almost $96,000 in restitution. Davis didn’t surrender in June for his prison term and is considered a fugitive.

Undercover FBI Agent Mark Aysta, who infiltrated the group in 2006, testified Monday that sovereign citizens’ teachings were distributed nationwide from a Las Vegas printing business.

In court documents, prosecutor Gregory Damm characterized the ideology as extreme, founded on conspiracy theories, inaccurate history and “irrational interpretations of the law.”