Alamo Pleads Innocent to U.S. Tax Charges

Preacher Tony Alamo, who once turned a small street ministry into a multimillion-dollar business, pleaded innocent Thursday to federal tax charges. He blamed Satan for his troubles.

Outside a Memphis courthouse, Alamo accused the Internal Revenue Service of working with the devil and the Roman Catholic Church.

“The government isn’t the devil, but people that are working for the government are possessed with the devil, just like I was before I got saved,” Alamo said.

U. S. Magistrate James Allen set Alamo’s trial for July 6 after a brief hearing at which the born-again Christian said he understood the charges against him.

Allen said Alamo can remain free on $50,000 bond pending trial. The bond was set by a federal magistrate in California earlier this month.

More than 20 years ago, Alamo founded a street ministry that eventually developed a multimillion-dollar business enterprise in Arkansas, Tennessee and California.

The businesses, focused on the sale of elaborately decorated denim jackets, collapsed in the late 1980s amid tax problems and lawsuits. Alamo made headlines in 1982 when he put his dead wife Susan’s embalmed body on display in Arkansas while followers prayed for her resurrection.

Alamo described his church as a worldwide ministry but said he was unsure how many members it has.

His church and its businesses once operated out of Alma, Ark., near Alamo’s 250-acre compound. The Holy Alamo Christian Church is now headquartered in Canyon Country.

A federal grand jury in Memphis charged Alamo last month with filing a false income tax return in 1985 and failing to file returns the three following years.

The IRS has its regional headquarters in Memphis.

Alamo, 58, has struggled with the IRS for years, but the Memphis charges are the first accusing him of criminal tax offenses. If convicted, he would face up to six years in prison and $550,000 in fines.

Alamo was arrested on the Memphis indictment while in a California courtroom for a pretrial hearing on state child abuse charges.

He is accused of directing the beating of an 11-year-old son of a follower.

Defense lawyer Jeffrey A. Dickstein of Tulsa, Okla., said he expects Alamo to go before a federal jury in Memphis before he is taken to state trial in California.

“States tend to bow under the pressure of the feds even though they are supposed to be more powerful than the feds,” Dickstein said.

Alamo said the federal government has been after him for years.

“If the government would stop persecuting the churches, then we would be able to win more people to the Lord,” he said.

Dickstein advised Alamo to limit his comments to reporters about the Catholic Church.

“There may be some Catholic people on the jury,” Dickstein said. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

But Alamo described the Catholic Church as a religious cult.

“Anyone who doesn’t belong to the Catholic Church, they call you a cult,” he said. “That, to me, is the world’s most dangerous cult, the Vatican.”

He accused the government of ignoring the Constitution in favor of “Roman canon of law.”