Posted on 05/31/2009 6:50:27 AM PDT by Born Conservative
A prosecutor looking for illegal immigrants seized thousands of confidential tax records from an income tax preparer popular with Hispanics in this northern Colorado city.
The October seizures led to identity-theft and criminal-impersonation charges against more than 70 people, and prosecutors allege that as many as 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants were working using false or stolen Social Security numbers.
But the American Civil Liberties Union said the documents of as many as 4,900 people were seized, many of them legal residents, and that the probe was the "equivalent of a house-by-house search of innocent homeowners in order to find a suspect believed to be somewhere in the neighborhood."
Two judges have agreed, ruling that Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck had no probable cause to seize the records. Mr. Buck is appealing, however, and a ruling in his favor could open up a new avenue for prosecuting illegal immigrants.
The charges have been ironic for immigrants like Horacio Arturo Cervantes. The 42-year-old father of four from the Mexican state of Chihuahua said he had been honest about paying taxes, even though he was in the country illegally, because he was hoping for a path to U.S. citizenship.
Cervantes pleaded guilty to identity theft before the judges' rulings, and now faces deportation. He said he pleaded because he wanted to get out of jail and try his chances in immigration court.
"I feel like I'm up in the air, not knowing what's going on, just with a desire to stay here," he said in an interview in Spanish. His next court date is June 23.
Mr. Buck's investigation, dubbed Operation Numbers Game, marked the first time a prosecutor used tax records to charge illegal immigrants with identity theft, according to the ACLU and the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
BINGO! What do you think the purpose of “La Raza tax service” is?
You think 1,300 illegals just picked a tax service out of the phone book? No, they knew exactly where they could get someone to help them fill out the phony forms.
He got warrants which 3 different judges have decided were not properly obtained. If all warants were valid then there would be no 4th Amendment cases in our courts. They are plenty of them.
BTW your logical fallacy here is called begging the question. It is also an argumentum ad vericundum (bowing to the weight of authority). He is the prosecutor. He is investing a crime. He must be right.
Were the forms phony? Or the income declared? Or the TIN? None of the above.
What was phony was the SS# that these guys provided to their employers to prove they were "legal." I seriously doubt the tax preparer asked for or submitted these numbers to the IRS. Indeed we know that because the tax return would have been bounced at some point for having incorrect information.
The IRS does not require a SS# to submit and income tax form.
And again, no one has charged the tax preparer with any crime.
Same argument for you Skippy...They are Judges, they understand the law, They must be right?
The courts are chock full of liberal moron judges!
First, I don't think your facts are exactly right. They seized 4900 tax records, of which 70 were believed to be from illegals. I don't know whether you are in business but tell me how long you could survive on the revenue from preparing 1300 fairly simple tax forms. Assume $300 per tax return, which is probably high. Ready, steady, go.
I have a couple of modest proposals. Let us go through the US and shut down and seize the records of every business that uses "La Raza" as part of the title. Must all be illegal or front runners of illegals. Surely, must be (complete and utter sarcasm for those reading this).
Second modest proposal, since we are at it. A lot of bootleggers were Irish. Let us seize the records of anyone who does business with anyone with an Irish name. We are looking for bootleggers and bootlegging is an incredibly serious crime because it involves tax evasion, illegal immigrants, murdering police and public officials.
Actually that is not my argument. My argument is only that 3 judges ruled against this prosecutor in a manner consistent with my understanding of the 4th amendment.
Since, as I understand it, one of these cases is before the Colorado Supreme Court, if I thought my argument further depended upon it, I would go and pull the case files and read the briefs on both sides. ACLU briefs are usually pretty easy to find. They also tend to be very well written because they have a lot of really smart people trying to make their mark and have the money to pay top legal talent to help.
Why were 1,300 of 5,200 of the preparers customers using a TIN rather than a SS# to file taxes?
The income likely was from a chicken plant or construction company. That wouldn't sound an alarm for any honest tax service?
Final oder in People v Ramon Gutierrez
There are some interesting statements in the Judge's Opinion:
It is a very clear and well written opinion and nothing in it suggest that the Judge is a liberal moonbat, rather than someone trying to follow the laws of the State of Colorado and the US.
This investigation, dubbed “Operation Numbers Game” by the District Attorney and the Weld County Sheriff, did not involve alleged or suspected criminal activities by Amalia Cerrillo, or any of her employees, at the time the affidavit for the search warrant was presented to the judge for review. The affidavit presented in support of the search warrant contained information that one named client of Amalia’s Tax Service, Mr. Trejo, had filed tax returns using an admittedly false name and SSN.
What is even more evident from a review of this affidavit is what is absent, and that is individualized suspicion of criminal activities as to any particular client; probable cause, as opposed to suspicion, to believe that a crime was committed; and probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found in this defendant’s file, or any other specific file of the 5,000 files seized and searched by the investigators. There was no information in the affidavit that any law enforcement agency anywhere in the country had received a complaint from a person that his/her name, SSN, or any other type of identifying information was used to file tax returns through Amalia’s Tax Service, other than the one relating to Mr. Trejo’s case.
Well, since upon presentation of facts by an investegator a Court of Law wrote in a decision that there was no hint of evidence that this was anything other than an honest business, and none was alleged, your suggestion that this business is dishonest is as the law defines the term defamatory.
The number of regular-Joe type people who know there isn't just one big lump of 'law' involved in our American legal system are few and far between.
Forget them being able to recognize any principles if they should conflict with personal beliefs.
If anyone who upholds the US Constitution and the laws protecting privacy is a liberal moonbat, then, like the judge I just quoted extensively from the relevant case at issue, I am a liberal moonbat. Whatever. I am already long resigned to being a socialist for not believing that private businessmen have the right to be compensated $750B by their friend Paulson when their investments go south and their banks go belly up. That the Chicoms and and I are in 100% agreement that the US government should not print money to get itself out of the bind we are in just clinches the deal. I am a communist moonbat and that is all that can be said for it.
“La Raza tax service” Sotomayor is on the National Council of La Raza! what does she know and when did she know it?
People need to understand that as a result of the WOD the WOT and the environmental war we have been waging for decades, we have a lot of quasi-police around with nothing to do, actually, except try to cook up something to put on their year end performance appraisal to justify their existence. The numbers are not actually justified by the level of crime that actually exists, and so they need to go and find some crime.
I'd have to agree with Andy on this one. This is a case of a grandstanding county prosecutor on a fishing expedition trying to show that he can do what the feds won't do. The problem with fishing expeditions is, if they become accepted practice, they will expand beyond egregious cases such as this and end up violating the rights of Americans. Of course, as for privacy concerns, income taxation is incompatible with privacy in any case. But I favor strict adherence to IRS privacy rules such as they currently are.
The fact is, every time a payroll is filed, the federal government has ample opportunity to root out illegals. Did you ever hear of the Social Security Employer No-Match Letters Process? Sounds good, doesn't it? Every SSN either (1) belongs to the worker, (2) hasn't been issued, (3) belongs to a dead person, or (4) belongs to a live person other than the worker. If the feds actually carried out the matching process, almost all the illegals would either have to leave the country or work entirely off the books. But of course they don't. Instead of feeding a T1 from SSA to DHS, the matching process is bound up in red tape and regulation designed to ensure the illegal won't be hassled and will be available in November of the next even year.
I am firmly convinced government has been systematically subverting the natural law intended by the Founders with the administrative law, which was intended solely for the government.
These 'quasi-police ', as you call them, operate out of the administrative arm of the State. They exist not only as an end to their own means, but they also act as controlling devices for the populace by creating bureaucratic hoops people must jump through to get by in life. [Think DMV!]
As a bonus, these bureaucracies act as a dumping ground for educated idiots...people who couldn't make it in the private sector, but have the right amount of melatonin to become extra bonus points in the affirmative action game bureaucracies are forced to play.
[please no flaming from FReepers who work for the States. I know their are exceptions to the above comment:-]
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There are days I don't know whether to drop this forum and sign up with one of its detractors, or just battle on. I am not here to protect criminals or illegals.
I know exactly what you mean. I know I don't know everything, but at least I know the difference between a natural person and a artificial one.
The problem is that most people WON'T see the big picture. The fact the tax forms were illegally seized is immaterial. All they see is the fact that 'illegals' are involved and they earned the income while being here 'illegally'.
The same people who railed against Limbaugh's medical records being seized cannot and will not see that this is the same situation. You will have a hard time convincing people otherwise, but I wish you the best!
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BTW, the Founders embraced what we now referred to as 'illegals', but they called them denizens.
Let us correct a few of your misstatements here. First, all the IRS can do administratively is review your return and try to determine if you have paid the correct tax. If not they can assess the correct tax and penalties and interest.
Fines and jail require a criminal prosecution in a real court of law (not an administrative court). Now that the tax laws have been amended to put the burden of proof on the IRS after "good faith" compliance by the taxpayer, criminal cases are going to be obvious cases of deliberate tax fraud.
There are very very clear laws that protect the confidentiality of tax returns and restrict their use to the intended purpose of collecting revenue. This is for a very good reason. If tax returns start being used as prosecutorial tools for other crimes then the 5th amendment will kick in, folks can and will stop filing them and the "voluntary tax compliance system" will fall apart.
There is no madness in this at all. The alternative is to have the Italian system of tax collection. That is madness.
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