In 2019, a Swiss man named Jonas Lauwiner did something unusual. He crowned himself the King of Switzerland, complete with a symbolic ceremony in a church in Bern. It sounds like a joke, and in a way it is. But what he did next was deadly serious, and completely legal. Lauwiner had found a forgotten clause buried in the Swiss Civil Code. Under Article 658, any citizen can claim ownerless land for free, simply by writing a letter to the local authorities. Most people never knew it existed. Lauwiner decided to use it as a weapon. He began combing through land registries, hunting for plots and stretches of road that no one officially owned. Then, one letter at a time, he claimed them. To date, he has taken ownership of 148 separate properties totaling around 117,000 square meters, including 83 roads, all without paying a cent. Owning the roads is where it gets clever, and a little ruthless. Lauwiner now charges residents maintenance fees to use streets he acquired for free, and sells rights to build or pass through his land. He has described the whole project, only half-jokingly, as a military campaign waged digitally and without bloodshed. In one standoff, he reportedly offered to hand a road back to a local council for free, on one condition. They had to rename it after him. Otherwise, they could pay him around 150,000 francs.