tax evasion and avoidance concept
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Glen Stoll has entered into a plea agreement that may spell the end of a long trail of tax shenanigans. The agreement dated January 15, 2021 has Stohl pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and evading the payment of federal income taxes. The charges in the indictment relate to work that he was doing for Karl and Laurie Brady. The Bradys are awaiting sentencing on guilty pleas – the same charges as Stoll for Karl and just the evading for Laurie. The Brady indictment is from 2016. Stoll’s is from 2019. That is one of the interesting parts of the story.
Remedies At Law
Stoll ran an operation called Remedies At Law, which you have to go to the Wayback Machine to get a feel for. He helped people set up trusts to which their income was diverted, while the funds were still available to them for whatever purpose. Needless to say, that is not a way to legitimately minimize your tax obligations. Stoll’s operations had a religious tinge to them. I learned a new term while working on this story – affinity fraud. Jacquelyn Weaver takes a pretty deep dive into the manner in which the anti-government ideology of Stoll works its way into the thinking of some evangelical Christians on her blog Tracking The Leopard Meroz.
Kent Hovind
The best known Glen Stoll client is Kent Hovind, Doctor Dino. Hovind became prominent in the right wing conspiracy media bubble in 2015. Nearing the end of a long prison sentence for tax related crimes which had involved Stoll-created trusts, he was being tried for activity in relation to property seized as a result of his 2006 conviction. In a phone interview with Hovind in January 2015, I asked him if his association with Glen Stoll might have been part of what created his problems.
I had found that in 2005, DOJ had persuaded a federal judge to issue an injunction against Glen Stoll promoting a tax fraud scheme using sham trusts to help customers evade federal taxes. In the clip above Kent quibbles about that and further on in the interview speaks highly of Glen Stoll. (Here is the whole interview if you want to invest an hour of lifespan you will never get back.)
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I spoke to Kent just a couple of days ago asking for a comment on Stoll’s guilty plea. He still thinks very highly of Stoll. Kent asked me when I would be down to visit Dinosaur Adventure Land again. I told him that I was not going anywhere until I got vaccinated, which got a bit of a negative reaction from him. He closed by letting me know that there might be new developments with President Trump.
For what it is worth, the man who took over trusteeship of Creation Science Evangelism from Glen Stoll, Paul John Hansen, expressed some dissatisfaction with Stoll on his blog. Hansen is working with Hovind on a half-billion dollar lawsuit against the United States and various individuals concerning Kent’s 2006 conviction.
Hansen has not gotten back to me with detailed comments on the plea agreement. He did indicate that he thinks Stoll is not that good utilizing tools that establish the government lacks jurisdiction.
Hansen exists in a sort of alternative legal universe. He can’t point to judicial opinions that support his theories about extremely limited jurisdiction, but he tells me that judges are afraid of his arguments and in one way or another just fold when they face them – except, I guess for Judge Rodgers who sent him to prison for almost a year. Of course now she is one of the defendants in the half-billion dollar lawsuit.
At any rate, we might want to ask why if Glen Stoll was enjoined from promoting his trusts in 2005, he is finally being prosecuted in 2019. That’s next.
Matthew Schindler
Matthew Schindler is the only attorney involved in the Brady and Stoll cases who got back to me. He represents Laurie Brady. Mr. Schindler has been focused on federal criminal defense in Oregon for over twenty years. Laurie Brady is not his first tax protester rodeo.
His most notable experience with people with alternative views of federal authority was his defense of Kenneth Medenbach. one of the Bundy inspired occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. We talked about Pete Santilli who had covered the Hovind trial and embedded himself in the Malheur occupation.
Mr. Schindler told me that Stoll’s prosecution was the result of Judge Robert Jones challenging the prosecutors of the Bradys:
“Stoll had been blatantly violating a federal court injunction for 15 years and the government did nothing. The United States and IRS CID focus far too much on the victims of these tax fraud promoters and not nearly enough on the systemic and institutional threat that Stoll’s financial terrorism represents. Low hanging fruit like the Brady’s should never have been at the top of the government’s list. It is an embarrassment that Mr. Stoll would have continued to thumb his nose at the government except for the strong, and unusual, intervention by Judge Jones to demand that, in addition to the Brady’s, Stoll be investigated and prosecuted.”
Mr. Schindler sees people like Laurie Brady, if not her husband more as victims of people like Stoll. Adequate civil enforcement by the IRS would stop most of these schemes in their tracks. Instead people will continue blithely along for years and end up believing that the absurd theories are correct.
In 2014 Judge Ronald L Buch took apart the arguments in Peter Hendrickson’s Cracking The Code. Regardless of that Hendrickson insists that the processed refund claims using his theories memorialized on his website prove that he is actually right. He and I have been having the argument for years.
Mr. Schindler describes a similar phenomenon. If people drive by police cars at a hundred miles an hour regularly with no consequences they end up believing that the speed limit is not real. The main thing that fuels these schemes is weak enforcement.
Stoll’s Deal
The agreement discusses the sentencing guidelines and by my reckoning seems to categorize it as something calling for 51 to 63 months. Nonetheless, the government is agreeing to recommend five years of probation as long as Stoll demonstrates acceptance of responsibility. There is also restitution of $1,419,932 and a requirement that he catch up his own filing. That should be, as we say, “a number”.
It will be interesting to see whether Glen Stoll is finally discouraged from promoting his trust schemes.
Other Coverage
Robert Baty alerted me to the Stoll plea agreement on his Facebook site – Kent Hovind’s Worst Nightmare.
Note
I inquired with the records division of the Embassy of Heaven Church about Glenn Stoll. The response I received indicated that they did not have anybody by that name registered but they did have a Glen Stoll. I thought I had just made a careless error, but it turns out that the plea agreement is with the two n Glenn while the indictment was of the one n Glen. I can’t account for the inconsistency.