Saturday, May 2, 2015

IRS Seizes Life Savings From Another Small Business For Using Cash

United States v. $107,702.66
North Carolina Civil Forfeiture
Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart, a gas station, restaurant, and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. Then, one year ago, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, totalling more than $107,000.
With that, Lyndon entered the upside down world of civil forfeiture, where the government can seize and keep ordinary Americans’ property without ever charging them with a crime.
The IRS and Department of Justice are pursuing forfeiture of Lyndon’s money despite a recent policy change designed to prevent precisely these kinds of cases. In October 2014, the IRS announced that (absent “exceptional” circumstances) it would pursue forfeiture in cases like Lyndon’s only where there was evidence that the money being seized was derived from illegal activity. The U.S. Department of Justice announced a similar policy change in March 2015.
In February 2015, during a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways & Means Oversight Subcommittee, North Carolina Congressman George Holding told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen that he’d reviewed Lyndon’s case—without specifically naming it—and that there was no allegation of the kind of illegal activity required by the IRS’s new policy. The IRS Commissioner responded, “If that cases exists, then it’s not following the policy.”
When news of the IRS Commissioner’s statement got back to the United States Attorney in charge of Lyndon’s case, he advised Lyndon’s attorney and accountant that he was “concerned” that Lyndon’s case document was provided to Congress, and that:
Whoever made [the document] public may serve their own interest but will not help this particular case. Your client needs to resolve this or litigate it. But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency. My offer is to return 50% of the money. The offer is good until March 30th COB.
Under these new policies, the government should not be pursuing forfeiture of Lyndon’s bank account. But the government has refused to back down, and is actively pursuing the forfeiture of Lyndon’s money.
Lyndon is unwilling to give the government a single penny of his hard-earned money. As he puts it, “It took me 13 years to save that much money, and it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away.”
Lyndon did nothing wrong. That is why he has teamed up with the Institute for Justice to fight this shocking abuse of power, to get his money back and to make sure the government does not do this to anyone else.
 
 
Essential Background

Audio, Video and Images
Backgrounder: Government Unreformed

Client Video

Client Photos





Launch Release: IRS Caught Violating Its Own Civil Forfeiture Policy;  U.S. Attorney Admonishes Small Business Owner to Keep His Mouth Shut (May 1, 2015)

Legal Briefs and Decisions

Complaint (December 23, 2014)






Case Timeline
TBD




Additional Releases

Maps, Charts and Facts
none available

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Op-eds, News Articles and Links


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http://ij.org/north-carolina-civil-forfeiture



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

THESE CRIMINALS CALLING THEMSELVES IRS ARE REALLY PISSING OFF ALL AMERICANS AND THEY ALL NEED TO BE STRUNG UP ON LAMPPOSTS NOW!!!

Anonymous said...

Please stop.
No IRS seized this man's property, another man or woman did.
All he needs to do is make the claim against the man or woman.
That man or woman cannot speak for a business and say the business told them to take the money.

Civil forfeiture takes place when someone living makes a claim on the property of someone living and then files the papers making their claim and someone else living enforces their claim.

If we would walk out of the programming and see the people....there is no veil...there is no curtain....if we will just see these people and name them in criminal complaints, they have no boss or business owner who will stand with them and say, 'I told them to take the money, I claim it's mine and they represent me and took it!' They have no one that will do that.

And these alternate news sites with this alternate news that keeps talking the old talk, about the government did this, or the city did that or a bank did this.

That's not true.
A man or woman working for the government, what are they called? What is his or her name? did this, or took that, or signed some paper claiming a right to something.

When Harry Reid tried to take Bundy's property, everyone called it what it was, Harry Reid, making a claim on property he didn't own and trying to give it to someone else.

What happened when his name was out there? Did anyone pop up and say, I told him to do it? Anyone in the government? A rockafeller, a soros, rothschild? Nope, no one made the claim that they gave him authority, and he had no authority and could not make the claim and he backed off.

Now stop acting like victims and start taking names.
We are all out of bubble gum.

Take names, file criminal complaints of theft of property, send a copy of the complaint to the Department of Justice, they have 30 days to return your property or show proof why they claim a right to hold it.

He could have gotten a restraining order in a superior court, and stopped them, there is so much to be done than to post here with all these people who say they are awake and then want to shoot someone or say, I will wait for someone to save the day.

Save it yourself.
See these people, and stop helping them hide behind the lifted veil.

Anonymous said...

I try to refrain from using extreme language, but the word EVIL seems entirely appropriate. Nothing but thievery in the strongest sense of the word. STEALING. And in America, home of the free. And to think such utter corruption is tolerated right out in the open with no a shame. Yes, EVIL!