Yesterday, Monday, May 19th, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the February 2007 conviction of Kenneth Heath, of Shelby Township, Michigan, for multiple counts of tax evasion and one court of passing one of those bogus "bills of exchange" such as DiM has advocated.
Kenneth Heath was a follower of convicted tax scofflaw Irwin Schiff, and in 1963 stopped filing valid tax returns. What he did send the IRS was a blizzard of typical tax scofflaw arguments, including the claim that (although he lived in Michigan) he was a resident of "the California Republic". The IRS gave him an opportunity to refile his tax returns properly, without any fines for his frivolous returns, but he persisted in his antics and ran up more than $45Gs in penalties for improper and frivolous filings.
When the IRS finally charged him with tax evasion for a four year period, they calculated that his taxes owed were slightly more than $37Gs --- so he owed more simply for not filing proper returns than if he had filed proper returns and paid the taxes. But, at this point, he owed both - a total of more than $82,000, thanks to following Schiff's instructions.
Instead of clearing things up, Heath took advice from another crowd of cranks, the American Rights Litigators and Guiding Light of God Ministries, who helped him send the IRS "registered bills of exchange", similar to what we've seen on this forum from DiM and others. In Heath's case, there was a note in tiny type at the end of one of the document that said "void where prohibited by law," and the other was marked Not Negotiable on the back.
Since this "registered bill of exchange" was worthless and fictitiously declared that it would be covered by the US Treasury, it most certainly was prohibited by law, everywhere. This earned Heath a charge that mere money wouldn't solve for trying to pass fictitious obligations.
Once in court, Heath got himself a real lawyer, who managed to get him off on the one count related to the bogus bill of exchange that said "not negotiable". Heath was convicted on four counts of tax evasion and one count of presenting a fictitious obligation (the one with the fine print about "void"). Before sentencing, his lawyer tried to argue that Heath had diminished mental capacity that would negate wrongful intent; considering that Heath was a design engineer and a graduate of California Polytech, the court was unpersuaded. He was sentence to 21 months prison (actually 5 counts of 21 months, but to be concurrent)..
A report of the trial court verdict is at:
http://149.101.1.32/tax/usaopress/20...2-8_kheath.pdf
He appealed and was shot down, yesterday, by the Circuit Court. The decision is already on some websites including Lexis, where it is 2008 u.s.app. LEXIS 10657.
---------- and ...
In the few hours that have elapsed since the above news was posted, I have news of another winner. Michael John Smith of Wyoming ran up a lot of unpaid taxes, then sent the IRS one of those bogus bills of exchange to try to pay it, and was obnoxious to boot, and won himself 3 years of free room and board.
see:
http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv08439.htm