A prison inmate in upstate New York was convicted on 11 counts of tax fraud after he filed — and partially received — tax returns worth around $890 million, using techniques he says he learned off of a sovereign citizen website.
Ronald Williams, dubbed the “jailhouse CPA” by the Syracuse Post-Standard, was convicted last Thursday in District Court in New York of 11 counts of filing false claims for tax refunds, and on one additional count for assisting another prisoner in doing the same.
According to court documents, Williams filed tax returns in the spring of 2007, claiming that he earned half a million dollars in 2006 — during a time when he was incarcerated. The IRS sent him a refund check for $327,456 in April of 2007 — c/o the Camp Gabriels Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
The check was intercepted by employees of the state Department of Corrections, who notified the IRS criminal investigation division in mid April of that year. “Thereafter, the IRS re-reviewed the filing by defendant Williams and determined that his filing was false, fictitious and/or fraudulent. Defendant Williams was logged into the IRS system as a frivolous filer,” according to court documents.
Over the next few years, Williams filed a total of eleven other tax returns asking for similarly exorbitant refunds, one even going as high as $2 million. In that case, Williams claimed his source of income was a “Penal/Prison Bond,” and asked for the same amount as a refund. In another, he asked for $293 million and listed “Export Trade Agent” as his occupation.
“Williams, a likely by-product of having been issued a refund check in the amount
of $327,456.04, became known throughout the correctional facility for his tax scheme,” court documents say. “As a result, the defendant assisted numerous other inmates with preparing their own income tax returns seeking refunds.”
One inmate filed a fraudulent tax return with Williams’ help that asked for a refund of over $60 million. In exchange, the inmate gave Williams stamps and canned food, Marnie Eisenstadt of the Post-Standard reports.
In 2008, Williams was questioned, and “admitted that he prepared other inmates tax returns. A search of [his] belongings revealed numerous tax forms, social security numbers, ID numbers, and duplicate tax forms,” according to court documents.
Williams” attorney claimed that he had filed the returns after an article on the site “The America’s Bulletin,” a sovereign citizen website that puts out “Prison Packets” to instruct prisoners how to get themselves out of prison.
In 2009, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on the rise in sovereign citizen filings from prisoners, and identified America’s Bulletin as disseminating the practice:
America’s Bulletin sells “The Prison Packet” to inmates for $22. A green, spiral-bound notebook, “The Prison Packet” reformulates sovereign-citizen theories for inmates, focusing on a nonexistent set of “prison bonds” that supposedly underwrite inmates’ incarceration. By filing a blizzard of liens and complaints, the notebook promises, inmates can not only free themselves, but also walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Although outgoing prisoner mail is usually monitored, sovereign-citizen literature often slips by officials because the dense and often incomprehensible jargon they contain doesn’t register as glaringly extremist.)
Williams, who was first imprisoned when he was 18, had been serving a sentence for possession of stolen property — namely a “tractor-trailer full of canned beans off a Buffalo street,” according to the Post-Standard.
His sentencing for the new convictions will be in May, when he will face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250 thousand for each count.
Photo from Elnur / Shutterstock.
Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.
someone sure did like can foods
Says something about the Internal Revenue Service, and it's certainly not complementary.
Unless I missed something, a more accurate headline might be: "Jailed Sovereign Citizen Convicted For Tax Fraud, Five Years After IRS Mailed $327K Refund To Prison."
That is too funny.
What a dumb***
"...possession of stolen property — namely a “tractor-trailer full of canned beans off a Buffalo street,”
Suppose that was his way of having a rip-roaring good time.
Moronic on sooo many levels.
DF2691 If I stole a tractor-trailer rig, got it parked somewhere and eagerly opened it to see what I'd gotten, I'd be awfully disappointed by a load of beans.
DQKennardDF2691 Well, at least you couldn't say it wasn't worth a hill of beans.
this is hilarious, a 22$ "prison packet" that promises to free you and somehow magically help you walk away rich at the same time....actually leads to more jail time and a massive amount of debt...LOL!
now arrest the people who published the prison packet for fraud and hope they try to pull the same stunts
Without the government these sovereign citizen's would have to find a new gig.
...and a new place to live.
Note, of course, that what the guy did *worked*. The only thing that tripped him up was the prison mail screen. If he'd done this on the "outside" (or even had it delivered to a friend), he'd have gotten the check.
It's a roll of the dice on whether he'd get caught, I suppose, but it worked.
I understand that through supplying false info to the IRS, one might escape some tax liability, but how does one fool the IRS into actually sending a 300000 + dollar refund check?
kentuckyattorney Buy the Book! ;)
kentuckyattorney Because they don't have the time or manpower to check out every claim. That's also how people like Wesley Snipes were able to get away with evading payment for years.
Flying Squidkentuckyattorney I'm sorry, but this just shows how little the IRS depends on computers and cost/benefit analysis. Simple suggested system modification: Every tax refund over $100k, print out on a list for a human to check against a historical database. Wow. 10 minutes, and one employee. Cost = minimal.
Denise Ringler NashFlying Squidkentuckyattorney
A lot could be done with reporting of anomalies and exceptions.
kentuckyattorney Partially because in the name of cost cutting, largely driven by the GOP of course, the IRS has cut back on inspectors.
kentuckyattorney They rubber stamp the $300 M checks; it's the $27.35 checks they audit. Paperwork is much more straightforward.
He shoulda stuck with ripping off semis full of beans.
We should all be grateful that this guy turned to the Dark Side so early, because he clearly shows promise as a potential recruit for Wall Street. Perhaps he's just the first wave in advance of the next group of potential sovereign citizens selling "bonds."
So...this guy has been "full of beans" for a long time, then?
Funny, seeing where he was penned up,,,Camp Gabriel. I was trying to remember the less-than-one-light town I lived in for a time when I attended college in the Adirondacks 30 years ago, at the time they were turning an old tuberculosis sanatorium into a prison. It was Gabriels, New York, as this now reminds me...
Pssst... hey... hey pal... over here... want some beans? I got 'em cheap.
If these "sovereign" citizens and other tax cheats and militia types would spend one tenth of their time working for a living instead of trying to scam the system, they would be much better off.
Now he gets to sit his sovereign azz in that cell for another few years to hatch up the next hairbrained plot.
marconickolas
I think a good number of these sorts of people are sociopaths. I am related to a couple such people--not so much into the sovereign citizens movement, but paranoid about the government spreading chemicals on the population at 35,000 feet via chemtrails and such.
What a maroon. I went out to the American Bulletins website: www.americansbulletin.net for a lookylook. Pretty sparse. Probably need to get their Platinum Membership, only $39.99 a year, to get the goods. The bookstore has some interesting page turners such as: The Law Of Merchants and Negotiable Instruments in Colonial New York 1664 to 1730 only $45.00 ... while supplies last. Order now and you'll receive $6.00 off TORTS In A Nut Shell 5th Edition.
pshipkey Mmmmmm...torts in a nut shell... :::drools:::
;-)
tomfodwpshipkey That'd be pretty funny if someone ordered _Torts in a Nut Shell_ and received a book on making tortes.
tomfodwpshipkey Don't knock it. There are more attorneys out there who got through law school on the Nutshell series than you'd suspect. Many of us also studied extensively with that well-known academic jurist, Prof. Gilbert.
The Socratic method might make for a good movie, but when you're dealing with areas of the law that are essentially statutory (unlike something like Constitutional law, which involves precedent, argument, interpretation, etc.), the Socratic method is a huge waste of time.
@Early Out Mr. (or Mrs or Ms) Early Out - so.... you are a Nutshell Lawyer? :)
Let's see...runs a successful business and pays a very low effective tax rate. Qualifies as a Republican Presidential candidate!
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