A “sovereign citizen” in Washington pleaded guilty to defrauding the IRS with around $2.5 million in phony tax returns, on behalf of unsuspecting clients of his tax preparation and bookkeeping business.
Timothy Garrison calls himself the treasurer of the “Assemblies on the Counties at Large,” a group of Washington-based sovereign citizens who have individually been accused of a wide-range of crimes, including threatening to abduct public officials.
Garrison, his wife and two others in the group were part of the common-law jury in Alaska that “acquitted” Schaeffer Cox after he was slapped with a misdemeanor gun charge. Cox was later arrested for allegedly stockpiling weapons in a plot to kill several state officials.
“Garrison’s scheme … as executed through the filing of over 50 false tax returns for a number of clients, resulted in a tax loss of between $2.4 million and $2.5 million as estimated by the government, although the exact figure is unknown,” prosecutors wrote in the plea agreement that Garrison signed, according to the Seattle PI.
In June, authorities raided the Garrison home after Timothy Garrison sent a letter to a federal marshal saying he planned to “arrest” two mayors in Skagit County. Garrison was investigated over the next ten months for tax fraud.
Prosecutors dropped a gun charge against Garrison as part of the plea agreement. He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 2nd.
