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Kent E. Hovind is an American Christian fundamentalist evangelist and tax protester. He is a controversial figure in the Young Earth creationist movement whose ministry focuses on denial of scientific theories in the fields of biology, geophysics, and cosmology in favor of a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative found in the Bible. Hovind's views, which combine elements of creation science and conspiracy theory, are dismissed by the scientific community as fringe theory and pseudo-scholarship. He is also controversial within the Young Earth Creationist movement; Answers in Genesis openly criticized him for continued use of discredited arguments abandoned by others in the movement.
Volksfront, also known as Volksfront International, was an American white separatist organization founded on October 20, 1994, in Portland, Oregon. According to Volksfront's now defunct website, the group described itself as an "international fraternal organization for persons of European descent." The logo of Volksfront was the Algiz rune, a common rune used as a neo-Nazi symbol common among other organizations such as National Alliance. Volksfront had approximately 50 members in the United States split between four chapters designated as Pac-West, Central States, North East, and Gulf-Atlantic, and an additional 50 members dispersed in other countries including Germany, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Spain. The goal of the movement was to create an all-White homeland in the Pacific Northwest. The flag of Volksfront was based on the Nazi flag in the colors of black, white, and red with the Volksfront logo and the slogan was "Race Over All" implying that race mattered over everything else. In August 2012, the United States branch of Volksfront announced their dissolution via their website. Citing harassment and investigations by the authorities, the group said it was disbanding.
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Diane Lynn Kroupa is an American attorney who served as a federal judge of the United States Tax Court from 2003 until 2014. Kroupa previously was the Chief Judge of the Minnesota Tax Court. Following her criminal conviction in U.S. District Court for a tax-related crime, she was sentenced to 34 months in prison. She has since been released from prison.
A tax protester, in the United States, is a person who denies that he or she owes a tax based on the belief that the Constitution of the United States, statutes, or regulations do not empower the government to impose, assess or collect the tax. The tax protester may have no dispute with how the government spends its revenue. This differentiates a tax protester from a tax resister, who seeks to avoid paying a tax because the tax is being used for purposes with which the resister takes issue.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of conspiracy arguments asserting that Congress, the courts and various agencies within the federal government—primarily the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)—are involved in a deception deliberately designed to procure from individuals or entities their wealth or profits in contravention of law. Conspiracy arguments are distinct from, though related to, constitutional, statutory, and administrative arguments. Proponents of such arguments contend that all three branches of the United States government are working covertly to defraud the taxpayers of the United States through the illegal imposition, assessment and collection of a federal income tax.
Eddie Ray Kahn is an American tax protester. Kahn is currently in prison for tax crimes, with a tentative release date of 2026. Kahn founded the group American Rights Litigators and ran the for-profit businesses "Guiding Light of God Ministries" and "Eddie Kahn and Associates." According to the U.S. Justice Department, all three organizations are or were illegal tax evasion operations.
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The redemption movement is a debt-resistance movement and fraud scheme which is primarily active in the United States and Canada. The group alleges that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills, forming a foundational section of the pseudolaw movement. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor "kits," collections of pseudolegal tactics sold to participants despite a complete lack of any actual legal basis. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as their aim is ultimately to extract money from the government by using secret methods. The name of the A4V scheme in particular has become synonymous with the movement as a whole.
The following table indicates the party of elected officials in the U.S. state of North Dakota:
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Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia whose leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the government of the United States, including the transfer of presidential power as prescribed by the United States constitution. It was incorporated in 2009 by founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former paratrooper. In 2023, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and another Oath Keepers leader, Kelly Meggs, was sentenced to 12 years for the same crime. Three other members have pleaded guilty to this crime, and four other members have been convicted of it.
Honest services fraud is a crime defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1346, added by the United States Congress in 1988, which states "For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."
McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that the federal statute criminalizing mail fraud applied only to the schemes and artifices defrauding victims of money or property, as opposed to those defrauding citizens of their rights to good government. The case was superseded one year later when the United States Congress amended the law to specifically include honest services fraud in the mail and wire fraud statutes.
David Wynn Miller, also styled :David-Wynn: Miller or David-Wynn: Miller, was an American tool and die welder, pseudolegal theorist, and leader of a tax protester group within the sovereign citizen movement. A self-proclaimed judge, Miller is best known for creating "quantum grammar", a version of the English language to be used by people involved in judicial proceedings. He asserted that his constructed language, which is purportedly based on mathematics and includes unorthodox grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax, constitutes the only "correct" form of communication in legal processes. His views also include a variation of the strawman theory. People seeking remedy with Miller's syntax in court have not met with success. His language is incomprehensible to most people and the pleadings that use it are routinely rejected by courts as gibberish. Since Miller's death, his language has seen continued usage by other people within the sovereign citizen movement.
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a U.S.-based anti-Muslim advocacy group that opposes what it calls "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans.
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
References
- ↑ United States v. Stoll, case no. C05-0262RSM, United States District Court for the Western District of Washington (Seattle Div.) (June 27, 2005), at .
- ↑ "Sovereign Citizen Movement," Anti-Defamation League, at Archived 2016-11-27 at the Wayback Machine .
- ↑ Heckman, Candace (2005-02-17). "Two Snohomish County men accused of anti-tax scheme". Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Retrieved 2007-02-04.
- ↑ "Embassy of Heaven evicted in tax case". Archived from the original on 2007-10-21. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
- ↑ "Licensed By Heaven". Archived from the original on 2007-12-15. Retrieved 2007-10-21.
- ↑ "Going to Jail - First Police Encounter". Archived from the original on 2007-09-05. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
- ↑ "Orland, Calif". Archived from the original on 2007-02-20. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
- ↑ Tribune, Jennifer Bjorhus Star. "State: Embassy of Heaven 'insurance' is far from divine". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2022-03-29.
- ↑ Jennifer Bjorhus, "State: Embassy of Heaven 'insurance' is far from divine," Oct. 10, 2012, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minn.), at Archived 2014-05-04 at the Wayback Machine .
- ↑ News release, "Washington State Man Accused of Marketing Fraudulent Tax Avoidance Schemes Disguised as Churches, Other Entities," April 19, 2019, United States Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon, U.S. Department of Justice, at Archived 2019-11-09 at the Wayback Machine .[
- ↑ Order, docket entry 36, Sept. 9, 2019, United States v. Stoll, case no. 19-cr-00112, U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
- ↑ "Plea Agreement, United States v. Quesada-Padilla". Federal Sentencing Reporter. 21 (5): 351–359. 2009-06-01. doi:10.1525/fsr.2009.21.5.351. ISSN 1053-9867.