Tax Protester, on Probation in Break-In, Ordered to Find Job

“I guess I gotta get a job,” Thomas Pat Creech said with a smile minutes after a federal judge ordered the former Orange County tax protester to seek full-time employment on Monday.

Creech, known as “Maverick Minister II” of Your Heritage Church, recently served a six-month prison sentence for breaking into the Garden Grove headquarters of his anti-tax organization after the building was seized by the Internal Revenue Service in 1984.

The IRS seized the building belonging to Your Heritage Protection Assn. because organization founder Armen Condo owed the government $1.5 million in back taxes. Soon after Condo was sentenced in 1982 to serve eight years in prison on mail tax fraud charges, Creech took over as leader of the organization.

A thin, bearded man, Creech said he works full time for the church as its treasurer and only counselor. Richard Nagy, Creech’s probation officer, asked the court to revoke Creech’s probation because Creech has not found a job since he was released from prison in August.

“What you are doing is not work,” U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima told Creech. “You are free to do it, but you need a job.”

Tashima said he considers Creech’s church work “volunteer work” and ordered Creech to begin looking for a paying job.

Creech, who was a licensed electrical contractor until 1979, told Tashima he would try to get his license reinstated and seek work in that field.

After his release from a federal minimum-security prison in the Mojave Desert town of Boron, Creech said, he moved the church to Bloomington, an unincorporated town in San Bernardino County. Creech said he has rented the Ironworkers’ Union Hall and resumed his tax protest counseling sessions, and also holds public meetings on Thursdays and Sundays. He said he lives on $700 to $1,000 a month donated by members.

‘In Dire Straits’

“Most of our members are being mugged by the IRS and are in dire straits,” Creech told Tashima. He said church membership has dwindled over the years, but he did not say how many members remain active.

Creech said the IRS is garnishing the wages of church members who refuse to pay their taxes. He claims that the IRS obtained a list of church members when government agents seized the Garden Grove headquarters on Nov. 14, 1984.