Bail Ruling Expected for Evangelist

With a dozen supporters lining the back row of a courtroom, evangelist Tony Alamo appeared Monday in jail-issue blues for an initial hearing on federal tax charges and was ordered to return today for a ruling on whether he deserves to be freed on bail.

U. S. Magistrate Kirtland L. Mahlum said Monday from the bench that Alamo, arrested Friday on the tax charges, apparently is not eligible for release because a judge in Tennessee had issued a no-bail warrant for the religious leader.

But Mahlum held off a final ruling until today, saying Monday that he simply wanted to double-check details of the warrant with court officials in Memphis, Tenn., where Alamo was indicted last week on four criminal counts. The evangelist, arrested in San Fernando Superior Court while appearing on an unrelated felony child-abuse case, spent the weekend in jail.

Alamo, 58, who for years has had a running battle with the Internal Revenue Service, said nothing and displayed no emotion during the hearing Monday in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles. Before the hearing began, however, he looked back at his followers and clenched his right fist in an apparent signal of solidarity. Several returned the gesture.

A grand jury in Memphis, where Alamo and his followers operated retail and manufacturing businesses, indicted Alamo on April 19 on a sole felony charge of filing a false income tax return for 1985 and on three misdemeanor counts, alleging that he failed to file returns for the years 1986, 1987 and 1988.

If convicted, Alamo, a former country singer whose real name is Bernie Lazar Hoffman, could receive up to eight years behind bars, five for the felony charge and a year apiece on each count of failing to file. He could draw fines of up to $550,000.

The Memphis case mark the first criminal tax charges filed against Alamo, prosecutors said Monday. Last year, the IRS filed a $10-million claim against him for failing to pay taxes earned on a variety of businesses that flourished during the 1980s.

Alamo and his late wife, Susan, built a large religious following during the 1970s and 1980s, with church members providing free labor in church-owned businesses in California, Arkansas and Tennessee. The businesses were best known for expensive, rhinestone-studded denim jackets and other clothing sold to celebrities.

At one time, dozens of families lived in a Saugus commune operated by the Holy Alamo Christian Church, where Alamo preached his own brand of anti-Catholic, anti-government Christianity.

The IRS stripped the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation of its tax-exempt status in 1985 and has since been trying to collect back taxes. In March, 1992, the IRS auctioned off more than 400 of Alamo’s belongings in an attempt to satisfy a tax debt now estimated at between $2 million and $3 million, IRS spokesman Dan Boone said Monday. The auction netted $8,600, Boone said.

Federal prosecutors said they did not specifically target Alamo for criminal charges. But Assistant U. S. Atty. Devon Gosnell, chief of the Memphis criminal division, said it is official policy to prosecute any taxpayer who doesn’t file returns.

“It’s anyone who fails to file and that failure to file has to be intentional,” Gosnell said. “It can’t be a mistake. Three years in a row--that’s no mistake,” she said, referring to Alamo’s returns for 1986 through 1988.

On his 1985 return, according to the indictment, Alamo reported gross income of $2,494. The real amount was substantially more, Gosnell said. She declined to say how much more.

Appearing Monday before Mahlum, Assistant U. S. Atty. Chris Belcher, the lead prosecutor in the tax case, said there was compelling evidence that Alamo was both a flight risk and a “very serious danger” to potential witnesses. Belcher did not elaborate.

Jeffrey A. Dickstein, an Oklahoma lawyer who has been Alamo’s attorney for several years, said those allegations were nonsense. He called the tax charges harassment.

“You lose your tax-exempt status if you bad-mouth the government,” Dickstein said. “That’s what this is all about.”

In July, 1991, Alamo was acquitted of a charge of threatening to kidnap a federal judge in Arkansas.

He has had two court dates in San Fernando this month on a charge that he ordered the 1988 beating of an 11-year-old boy at the Saugus commune. Alamo has denied any wrongdoing.