Alleged tax ruse described in trial
The author of a book on tax defiance was a trustee in a company that two Allegany County tax protesters allegedly used to avoid paying income taxes, a federal court jury was told Tuesday.
Author Barrie Konicof’s name came up several times during the jury trial of Patricia O’Connor and Richard Ray Drachenberg, residents of Angelica who are accused of failing to pay more than $200,000 in income taxes over a 12-year period.
A critic of federal tax policies who was sentenced to prison for tax crimes in 2001, Konicof was one of the trustees of a company that O’Connor and Drachenberg allegedly used to avoid paying taxes, according to witness testimony and court papers.
Konicof sold documents and products to help people who wanted to “extricate themselves” from paying income taxes, testified Raymond Milton Cox, who was also a trustee of Universal Solutions, a company managed by Drachenberg.
Cox, a retired actor and paralegal from Grand Rapids, Mich., was called as a prosecution witness Tuesday.
According to federal prosecutors in Michigan, Konicof was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison in 2001 after his conviction for tax fraud conspiracy and failure to pay income taxes. In 1995, he published a book called “The Great Snow Job — The Story of Taxes and Money, Fraud and Slavery.”
In a trial that began in Buffalo last week, O’Connor and Drachenberg are accused of failing to pay income taxes. The two have pleaded not guilty and are defending themselves before U. S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara.
O’Connor and Drachenberg claim they are not U. S. citizens and are “New York nationals” who cannot be forced to pay taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
Assistant U. S. Attorneys Aaron J. Mango and John E. Rogowski are prosecuting the case.
While working as a high-tech computer consultant, O’Connor had all her paychecks made out and sent to Universal Solutions and another company, both of which were managed by her husband.
The IRS has charged that having the checks sent to those companies was a ruse that O’Connor used to avoid paying taxes.
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