According to the Justice Department, Austin Gary Cooper; his wife, Martha Cooper; and their organization, Taking Back America (TBA) falsely advised customers that by renouncing their "United States" citizenship and claiming "American" citizenship, they could avoid paying federal income tax.
The suit, filed in Denver, seeks a court order preventing the Coopers, TBA, and anyone working with them to stop promoting the scheme and to provide the government with a list of customers who have purchased it.
"The Department of Justice is working systematically to shut down scammers who promote bogus tax schemes,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division in a press release. "Joining ranks with these con artists can lead to substantial penalties and criminal prosecution."
Justice officials allege that the Coopers sold their scheme, at $1,600 a pop, to as many as 2,000 victims nationwide and provided the purchasers with instructions on how to stop their employers from withholding federal income taxes from their paychecks. In addition, claims the government, the Coopers pushed the "no-no" envelope even further by furnishing scheme purchasers with form letters to send to the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration demanding a repayment of back taxes.
According to courts papers filed by the Justice Department, the Coopers and TBA used a network of distributors to market their scheme and promoted it on a website, at seminars and in periodic telephone conference calls. In its court papers, the government alleges that Austin Gary Cooper was criminally convicted in 1990 of willfully attempting to evade or defeat the payment of federal income tax by failing to file income tax returns, failing to pay income tax, and filing false tax-withholding certificates.
