Metzger Accused of Lying About Income

Attorneys seeking to collect a $12.5-million civil judgment against Tom Metzger and his followers accuse Metzger in court papers of hiding income received by his white supremacist organization.

In documents filed in San Diego Superior Court this week, attorney James McElroy said Metzger listed his 1989 income as $13,871, although he made deposits totaling $61,464 in one account that year and $24,572 in another.

In 1988, the papers said, Metzger filed a tax return listing his income as $16,523 but deposited $86,000 in two bank accounts.

“Mr. Metzger has, by the declarations filed with this court, committed perjury and fraud” in addition to filing false tax returns, McElroy wrote in the documents.

Metzger did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday from The Associated Press.

McElroy, working with Montgomery, Ala., attorney Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is seeking to collect the judgment on behalf of the family of Mulugeta Seraw.

Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant who lived in Portland, was beaten to death by a group of skinheads in a November, 1988, attack.

A jury in Portland ruled in October that Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group were responsible for inciting the skinheads involved in the attack.

Metzger was ordered to pay $5 million in damages, WAR $3 million and Metzger’s son, John, $1 million.

Two skinheads who earlier pleaded guilty in the slaying of Seraw also were ordered to pay $500,000 each as part of the civil judgment.

Another $2 million in non-economic damages was awarded to Seraw’s survivors, along with $500,000 for loss of income to the victim’s family.

McElroy said in the papers that Metzger is trying to get out of paying the judgment because he “hates blacks with an extreme passion and is adamantly opposed to any of ‘his’ money going to the benefit of a black family.”