Wayne C. Bentson is a businessman and tax protester from Payson, Arizona.
Bentson operated Western Information Network and the Bentson Group until May 1997. He represented himself as a tax expert and told his clients that they did not need to pay federal income tax.
Benston helped Milton William Cooper research the article BATF/IRS –Criminal Fraud which was published in Veritas magazine, issue #6, in September 1995.
According to the United States Department of Justice, Bentson was accused of falsely advising clients that the federal income tax laws apply only "to individuals residing in the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico" or federal lands where the federal government has jurisdiction. Bentson was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States and willful failure to file personal federal income tax returns by a federal jury on December 13, 2004 in Tucson, Arizona. On May 18, 2005, he was sentenced to four years in prison and three years of "supervised release during which he is barred from giving tax advice." He was ordered to pay $1,129,937 to the Internal Revenue Service in restitution. [1]
Bentson was incarcerated at the Federal Community Corrections facility at Phoenix, Arizona, and was released in May 2008. [2]
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.
Richard George Renzi is a former American politician who was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing Arizona's 1st congressional district from 2003 until in 2009. In 2013, he was convicted on federal criminal charges against him for his involvement in a land-swap deal.
Wesley Trent Snipes is an American actor, film producer, and martial artist. His prominent film roles include New Jack City (1991), White Men Can't Jump (1992), Passenger 57 (1992), Rising Sun (1993), Demolition Man (1993), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), U.S. Marshals (1998), as the dhampiric vampire hunter Eric Brooks / Blade in the Blade film trilogy (1998–2004), The Expendables 3 (2014) and for his role on The Player (2015). Snipes was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his work in The Waterdance and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance in the film One Night Stand.
Melvin Reynolds is an American politician from Illinois. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995. He resigned in October 1995 after a jury convicted him of sexual assault charges related to sex with an underage campaign worker.
Arthur L. Farnsworth is an American politician and convicted tax protester. Evidence found by the government in Farnsworth's case helped the government indict actor Wesley Snipes on tax charges.
Irwin Allen Schiff was an American libertarian and tax resistance advocate known for writing and promoting literature in which he argued that the income tax in the United States is illegal and unconstitutional. Judges in several civil and criminal cases ruled in favor of the federal government and against Schiff. As a result of these judicial rulings Schiff was in a hospital prison serving a sentence of 162 months at the time of his death at the age of 87. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that Schiff died on October 16, 2015.
Richard Michael Simkanin was a tax protester who was imprisoned after having been convicted on twenty-nine counts of United States federal tax crimes.
Robert Barnwell Clarkson was an American tax protester in South Carolina.
A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Attorney probe of trading in the shares of ImClone Systems resulted in a widely publicized criminal case, which resulted in prison terms for businesswoman and television personality Martha Stewart, ImClone CEO Samuel D. Waksal and Stewart's broker at Merrill Lynch, Peter Bacanovic.
The KPMG tax shelter fraud scandal involves allegedly illegal U.S. tax shelters by KPMG that were exposed beginning in 2003. In early 2005, the United States member firm of KPMG International, KPMG LLP, was accused by the United States Department of Justice of fraud in marketing abusive tax shelters.
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, 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.
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.
John Peter Galanis is an American financier in the 1970s and 1980s, who became a notorious white-collar criminal. Galanis has four sons and, at the age of 76, is currently incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, after being convicted in 2019 for defrauding a Native American tribal entity and various investment advisory clients of tens of millions of dollars in a fraudulent and deceptive bond scam.
The 861 argument is a statutory argument used by tax protesters in the United States, which interprets a portion of the Internal Revenue Code as invalidating certain applications of income tax. The argument has uniformly been held by courts to be incorrect, and persons who have cited the argument as a basis for refusing to pay income taxes have been penalized, and in some cases jailed.
The redemption movement is a debt-resistance movement and fraud scheme active primarily in the United States and Canada. Participants allege 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. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor kits.
In 2005, Dale Graybill and his wife Shirley were charged in Connecticut with mail fraud and tax fraud. They had previously been charged in Alabama with securities fraud. They pleaded guilty to all of these.
Bradley Charles Birkenfeld is an American private banker, convicted felon, and whistleblower. During the mid- to late-2000s, he made a series of disclosures about UBS Group AG clients, in violation of Swiss banking secrecy laws, to the U.S. government alleging possible tax evasion. Known as the 2007 "Birkenfeld Disclosure", the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had reached a deferred prosecution agreement with UBS that resulted in a US$780 million fine and the release of previously privileged information on American tax evaders.
Guardians of the Free Republics, active around 2010, was a group based in the U.S. state of Texas regarded as being part of the sovereign citizen movement. The group was associated with Sam Kennedy, a talk-show host, and with Clive Boustred, a British-born conspiracy theorist living in California. The group was described as having an anti-government ideology.
Under the federal law of the United States of America, tax evasion or tax fraud, is the purposeful illegal attempt of a taxpayer to evade assessment or payment of a tax imposed by Federal law. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment. Compared to other countries, Americans are more likely to pay their taxes fairly, honestly, and on time.