Here’s my advice on a Friday morning: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
No pill will really help you lose 100 pounds without diet or exercise. No executor of a Nigerian estate is really going to send you millions of dollars just for answering an email. No seminar series is really going to turn your business into a million-dollar cash machine overnight. And no audio course on tax avoidance is going to save you tons of money on taxes. At least not legally.
Nonetheless, people apparently want to believe that these things actually work. And at least 44,000 people believed Daniel P. Andersen and his company, the Institute for Global Prosperity, who made millions selling courses on tax avoidance.
Andersen is about to be released from a California prison after serving a two-year prison sentence for conspiring to defraud the government. Andersen and the Institute for Global Prosperity sold audio courses at $1250 a pop and in-person conferences up to $37,000 each to folks hoping to learn “strategies” for not paying their taxes. It was the same old tax avoidance schemes as before: the 16th was never ratified, you don’t have to pay taxes if you don’t provide your Social Security number, wages aren’t subject to tax, ya-da, ya-da. And folks ate it up… to the tune of $50 million.
Andersen will not be allowed to return to his former “occupation” selling tax avoidance schemes (though, c’mon, who really thinks he won’t?). US District Judge James L. Robart has issued an injunction barring Andersen from promoting any more fraudulent tax schemes. The language of the injunction specifically prohibits Andersen from “organizing, promoting, marketing, or selling (or assisting therein) any tax shelter, plan, or arrangement … that incites or assists customers to attempt to violate the internal revenue laws or unlawfully evade the assessment or collection of their federal tax liabilities or unlawfully claim improper tax refunds.”
I know what you’re thinking: why would you bar someone from doing something that’s already illegal? This stumped me, too. And here’s the best I could come up with: to up sentence when he (inevitably) breaks the law again. But that’s just a tax lawyer speculating about criminal law, which is never a good idea. I’m waiting to hear back from my criminal law colleagues – I’ll let you know what they say.
Update: Richard A. Wilson, a criminal lawyer from Keystone Law Firm, P.C. in Wyalusing, PA kindly explained that my guess was on target. Thanks, Richard!
It’s a lot quicker and easier to throw someone under a jail for contempt of court — defying an injunction — than it is to bring a criminal prosecution.
Haha, that made me laugh. Nice one.^^