FEDERAL COURT IN COLORADO PERMANENTLY BARS NATIONWIDE
“EXPATRIATION” TAX SCAM

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today announced that a federal court permanently barred a Fort Collins, Colorado couple and their organization from promoting a tax scam.

Chief Judge Lewis T. Babcock of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ordered Austin Gary Cooper, his spouse Martha Cooper, and their organizations - Taking Back America and The Ten Foundation - to stop promoting a tax scam in which customers are falsely advised they can avoid federal income taxes by renouncing their U.S. citizenship in favor of “American” citizenship. The permanent injunction requires the defendants to stop promoting the scam, to give the Justice Department a list of customers who have bought materials from the defendants, and to post the order on the defendants’ website. The order makes permanent the preliminary injunction entered last month against the defendants.

“It is a victory for all law-abiding taxpayers when the government shuts down a tax-scam promotion,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “Stopping these illegal schemes is a top priority for the Tax Division.”

According to papers the Justice Department filed in the case, the Fort Collins, Colorado defendants sold their “expatriation” scam for as much as $1,600 to as many as 2,000 individuals nationwide. The court papers alleged that Mr. Cooper was criminally convicted in 1990 for failing to file income tax returns, failing to pay income taxes and filing false tax-withholding certificates.

Evidence previously submitted to the court showed that the defendants and Taking Back America gave customers fraudulent instructions on how to prevent their employers from withholding taxes from their wages and furnished customers with form letters to send to the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration requesting a return of back taxes.

More information about the case against the Coopers can be found at <http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/03_tax_601.htm> and.

More information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division can be found at www.usdoj.gov/tax <http://www.usdoj.gov/tax>.

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