Man Who Says Taxes Are Illegal Defends Himself in Evasion Case

A Glendale man who contends that federal income taxes are illegal opened his defense Thursday in U.S. District Court on income tax evasion charges.

Francis A. Marafino Jr., 33, faces six criminal counts on charges of failing to pay federal income taxes between 1991 and 1993, cheating the government out of $23,384, said the prosecutor, Deputy U.S. Atty. Paul Stern.

“There is evidence he didn’t pay taxes as far back as 1985, but we’re here today to prosecute him for just three years’ worth of tax evasion, from 1991 to 1993,” Stern said.

If convicted, he faces a maximum of 18 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines.

Marafino, an executive at a Glendale software company, is representing himself in the federal trial. He has also filed two civil suits against many of the government officials involved in his prosecution, charging that they violated his civil rights.

His defense Thursday consisted of questioning his employer’s bookkeeper, in relation to charges that he avoided withholding taxes.

During a break in the trial, Marafino, accompanied by four supporters, called the charges ludicrous. “The Internal Revenue Service, the judge, they’ve denied me my due process,” he said. “I’m being railroaded.”

Marafino’s supporters, who declined to give their names or say whether they pay federal income taxes, said the trial was rigged and “an utter fraud.”

“We’re talking about a revolution in this country,” said one. “There’s a widespread movement that’s worried that there will be a revolutionary war. The government is taking our rights. . . . There will be bloodshed.”

“We don’t care what motivates these people,” said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California. “It’s a case of tax evasion. His political beliefs, that’s not the issue. This is simply a case about tax cheating.”

Marafino dismissed any notions that he had committed a crime, but refused to elaborate.

“When this is over, you’ll see,” he said. “I’ll be able to talk then.”

Marafino has filed two civil suits in federal court against, among others, Stern, agents of the IRS, and U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson, who is presiding over his criminal trial. The civil suits are scheduled for a preliminary hearing next month.

Although prosecutors said they are familiar with cases like Marafino’s, they also said that Marafino’s alleged crimes were “highly sophisticated and complex.” Tax evasion cases brought against people who say the government lacks jurisdiction to either tax or prosecute citizens are not plentiful but are common enough to warrant coverage in a recent issue of the United States Attorney’s Bulletin, a newsletter for Department of Justice officials, Mrozek said.

The newsletter, from April 1998, includes an article titled “The Gold Fringed Flag: Prosecution of the Illegal Tax Protester.” The flag argument, according to the article’s author, is a common ruse among many used by criminal defendants to avoid prosecution, who contend that placing a gold fringe on the flag invalidates the flag and is an indication that the authority that displays it is illegitimate.

It rarely works, according to Jennifer Ihlo, a senior trial attorney for the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, who wrote the article.

Prosecutors alleged that Marafino not only failed to file and pay income taxes, but also concealed his financial assets by closing bank accounts in his own name, using cash extensively, not renewing his driver’s license, not registering his vehicle in his own name, and tinkering with his employer’s computerized payroll program “to ensure that little or no federal taxes were withheld from his paycheck.”