Oregon Attorney Convicted of Tax Fraud After Filing $1 Trillion Lien Against IRS

WebCPA, Couple Convicted in Tax Shelter Scheme:

A married couple was convicted of running an elaborate tax shelter scheme for over a decade in which they marketed tax trusts to clients, filed lawsuits against IRS employees, and prepared a $108 million tax lien against former Treasury Secretary John Snow.

Oregon attorney Micaela Renee Dutson, 48, and her husband Tony Dutson, 53, were convicted of nine counts for various criminal tax violations, defrauding the U.S. government out of approximately $7 million. The couple were convicted of conspiring to defraud the IRS, obstructing the IRS, causing clients to use bogus financial instruments in an attempt to pay their taxes, failing to file tax returns, and aiding and advising a client to file a false tax return.

The couple used Micaela Dutson’s law office in Tigard, Ore., to promote and sell tax trusts for several years before moving to Arizona in 2003. The couple made over $1 million from the scheme and paid no income tax. ...

After the IRS began auditing the Dutsons’ clients, and notified them that the trusts they were using to conceal their income from the IRS were shams, the Dutsons began a campaign to obstruct the IRS’s audits and investigation, and to harass and intimidate the individual IRS employees who were auditing or investigating them. ...

After the Justice Department filed the complaint for a permanent injunction, and IRS special agents had notified the Dutsons in person that they were under criminal investigation, the Dutsons filed a $1 trillion lien in California against several IRS employees who had attempted to audit or investigate the Dutsons, as well as the DOJ attorneys who filed the complaint. A federal court later ruled that the lien was null, void and without legal basis, but one week later, the Dutsons prepared a $108 million lien for a client against John Snow, who was then Secretary of the Treasury.