Posted on 03/30/2002 1:00:42 PM PST by Mom_Grandmother
Saturday, March 30, 2002 Charleston.Net
Local Man Gets 5 Years In Slavery-Fund Scheme
Goose Greek man must repay victims
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE,LA.-South Carolina man has been sentenced to five years in prison for promising people he could tap into a nonexistent fund for decendents of slaves. Carl Ervin Batts of Goose Creek also was ordered Thursday to repay $4,159 to five people who bought into his scheme.
Batts, who acted as his own attorney during a trial, apologized to U.S. District Judge Brady. "I'm just awful sorry for what I've done." Batts said. A jury convicted him in December of five counts of mail fraud but deadlocked on 11 counts of making false claims to the Internal Revenue Service. Procecutors have not decided whether to retry Batts on those charges.
Batts was accused of bilking thousands of dollars from 12 people, claiming he could get them millions of dollars for being decendents of slaves. He billed the IRS for more than $1.2 million on their behalf and sought more than $3.1 million for homes, cars, and furiture, prosecutors alledged.
Batts used tax forms to make the claims. The IRS paid some small claims before catching on to the scheme, prosecutors said. As part of the scheme, Batts told people they could reclaim all the imcome taxes they paid to the federal government because income taxes were never legally instiuted. Prosecutors said one of his claims was that reparations fund was built on illegally collected income taxes.
But it's ok if Jesse Jackson and the lawyers do this.
Oliver Goldsmith, {1728-1774} 'The Traveller' line 386
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