Senior US District Court Judge Lloyd George has decided that enough is enough. George issued a permanent injunction which prevents convicted tax evader Irwin Schiff from marketing products, including books, that improperly advise Americans that they are not required to file or pay federal income taxes. Schiff is currently serving what amounts to a life sentence for convictions on conspiracy, tax evasion and tax fraud; while the original sentence was just over 12 years, it is highly unlikely that the 80 year old Schiff will spend much time out of jail in his lifetime. Recent additions to Schiff’s sentence for contempt citations make it extremely unlikely that Schiff will be released.
Schiff and his former business partner, Cynthia Neun, who is also serving time in federal prison, were slapped with the ban so that they “cannot promote tax fraud schemes from within prison or when they are released.” Neun is slated to be released in 2010.
Schiff is the author of several books, including The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes, which has been banned from circulation as fraudulent commercial speech. The scheme made Schiff a wealthy man, causing the judge to remark:
Of all those who participated in this scheme, only Schiff made money. And in all other things in his life prior to this scheme, he was a failure in his life.
Schiff has also been ordered to pay more than $4.2 million in restitution for the charges. He allegedly made millions of dollars by scamming taxpayers into buying “how to” books and subscriptions in order to evade federal taxes. The arguments that he advanced have been repeatedly found by the federal government to be without merit.
Schiff still promotes his ideas from his web site at http://paynoincometax.com/ – interestingly, despite the ban, Schiff still shills his books. His banned book once sold for an amazing $42 (!) a pop is now available for free. That’s one free offer worth passing up.
Remember Irwin Schiff?
He is serving the equivalent of a life sentence for his tax evasion and tax fraud convictions. Though he was only sentenced to 13 years in federal prison, that should more or less be the end for the 80 year old tax evader.
Only it isn’t. A federal judge has sentenced him to an additional 11 months in prison for 15 contempt citations during his trial – 15! At this rate, he may make 100 in prison.
George Pragovich is at it again. A self-confessed anti-tax guru, Pragovich is said to be the brainchild behind the latest round of plaintiffs’ suits filed against the IRS.
Though Pragovich refuses to answer questions about his involvement in the suits, Heidi Broward, the wife of former plaintiff Paul Broward was quoted as saying "He’s one of the major coordinators of what we’re doing. I just fill out the forms and send them in."
Stunning, isn’t it? Folks who claim to want "out" of a system that they compare to slavery, alleging that most taxpayers are paying taxes blindly and not out of a legal obligation, appear to not be informed about what they are actually doing. Nonetheless, more than 100 such suits have been filed all over the country, including one filed pro se by Michael Stephens, a truck driver from Georgia whose case was dismissed without prejudice this year. Forty other such suits have already been dismissed.
There is no doubt that the remaining suits will likely be dismissed. There’s not much new about these kinds of cases which have been repeatedly rejected by the courts, except that this newest round of efforts appears more coordinated than previous suits. The coordinated suits were reportedly the result of networking efforts across the internet.
The most famous of the anti-tax prophets was Irwin Schiff, who was sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence in prison (13 years in prison – he was 78 at the sentencing) for hiding millions of dollars that he made off of his "paynoincometax.com" web site and related propaganda. This was not his first conviction for the same or related offenses. At his latest sentencing, the Judge noted "Of all those who participated in this scheme, only Schiff made money. And in all other things in his life prior to this scheme, he was a failure in his life."
