Goods Claimed After IRS Seizes Antique Mall

About 75 antique dealers forced to abandon their businesses without notice when the IRS seized a Laguna Hills antique mall last week were allowed to pick up their merchandise Tuesday.

Several of the vendors who stood in line to retrieve belongings said they had no idea where they would store their antiques.

“I don’t have a clue where we’ll end up,” said Pamela Freeman of Lake Forest, who rented space in the Antique Mall at 23200 Del Lago Drive for nine years. “This just is not fair.”

Another vendor Patti Davis of Lake Forest said the closing of the mall adds to her problems.

“This is so stressful,” said Davis, who recently lost her job and sells Depression-era items at the mall. “I have been counting on this to bring in a little extra income. None of us had any inkling this was going to happen.”

The antique dealers were caught in a dispute between the mall owners Peter and Diane Harwood and the IRS over a $27,000 tax bill in 1988 that grew to $190,000 with interest and penalties.

Peter Harwood said that although the tax collecting agency has threatened him with property seizure many times in the past five years, IRS agents didn’t give him any special warning that his mall would be locked up. Harwood said vendors were informed of his IRS troubles in a general meeting in December.

On March 27, treasury agents “just swooped down and closed our doors without a word or giving us notice,” he said. “They didn’t even have a valid court order. This is devastating.”

*

The IRS has a different story. An IRS spokeswoman said the agency obtained a court order before closing down the Antique Mall and that Harwood received at least 30 days’ notice.

“Seizure is absolutely the last resort,” IRS spokeswoman Judith Golden said. “It’s very expensive and is the very last thing we do” to collect a tax bill.

About 30 members of a grass-roots tax protest group called the Citizens Rights Task Force showed up Tuesday morning to lend their support to Harwood.

Vendors were being led inside the building and, accompanied by an agent, allowed to identify and haul off their goods.

“I’m calling friends to beg for space to store this stuff,” said one dealer who asked not to be identified. “This is so depressing.”