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IRS Seizes Over $100,000 From Innocent Small Business Owner, Despite Promise To End Raids
Institute For Justice
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In 2013 a small family bakery in Northwestern Oregon refused to make a cake for a lesbian wedding.
The owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa had no idea that their decision to follow the teachings of their Christian faith would lead to a multi-year legal battle. It’s a battle still being waged.
Click here to join Todd's American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives!
Aaron and Melissa Klein were eventually punished by the state of Oregon. -- The couple was fined $135,000 for refusing to participate in the lesbian wedding event.
It was the price they had to pay for refusing to violate their conscience.
They also made the painful decision to close their beloved bakery – for good.
The left-wing bigots and bullies finally got their pound of cake.
The Kleins made the announcement on the now-shuttered shop’s Facebook page.
“The Kleins closed their business months ago and simply now updated their page to reflect that,” said Hiram Sasser, an attorney for First Liberty Institute.
First Liberty is one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms handling religious liberty cases.
“We are continuing our appeal and look forward to achieving justice for them and all people of faith who may find themselves in similar circumstances in the future,” Sasser told me.
To be clear, Aaron and Melissa Klein did not go looking to engage in a fight with the LGBT community. The fight came to them and to their business.
Since that day more than three years ago, the Kleins have faced unrelenting attacks from the LGBT community. Their business was boycotted. They were bullied. Their children received death threats.
The Kleins were literally run out of business by an anti-Christian mob.
It's hard to believe that something like this could happen in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
But we live in a nation that pledges its allegiance to the Rainbow flag – a nation where gay rights now trump everyone else’s rights.
Family bakery closes after left-wing bullies finally get their pound of cake
(Courtesy Sweet Cakes by Melissa)
The owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa had no idea that their decision to follow the teachings of their Christian faith would lead to a multi-year legal battle. It’s a battle still being waged.
Click here to join Todd's American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives!
Aaron and Melissa Klein were eventually punished by the state of Oregon. -- The couple was fined $135,000 for refusing to participate in the lesbian wedding event.
It was the price they had to pay for refusing to violate their conscience.
They also made the painful decision to close their beloved bakery – for good.
The left-wing bigots and bullies finally got their pound of cake.
The Kleins made the announcement on the now-shuttered shop’s Facebook page.
“The Kleins closed their business months ago and simply now updated their page to reflect that,” said Hiram Sasser, an attorney for First Liberty Institute.
First Liberty is one of the nation’s most prestigious law firms handling religious liberty cases.
“We are continuing our appeal and look forward to achieving justice for them and all people of faith who may find themselves in similar circumstances in the future,” Sasser told me.
To be clear, Aaron and Melissa Klein did not go looking to engage in a fight with the LGBT community. The fight came to them and to their business.
Since that day more than three years ago, the Kleins have faced unrelenting attacks from the LGBT community. Their business was boycotted. They were bullied. Their children received death threats.
The Kleins were literally run out of business by an anti-Christian mob.
It's hard to believe that something like this could happen in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
But we live in a nation that pledges its allegiance to the Rainbow flag – a nation where gay rights now trump everyone else’s rights.
Lyndon McLellan lost over $107,000 in an IRS raid after the
agency seized the bank account belonging to his small business, L&M
Convenience Mart in Fairmont, North Carolina. “It took me 13 years to
save that much money and it took fewer than 13 seconds for the
government to take it away,” he said.
Like thousands of other victims of civil forfeiture, the government never charged Lyndon with a crime. Now, with help from the Institute for Justice, he’s fighting back to regain his hard-earned cash.
For
over a decade, Lyndon has run his mart, an unassuming place where
locals stock up on soft drinks and cigarettes. But last year, the IRS
wiped out the shop’s bank account using the Bank Secrecy Act. Under this
law, banks must report all cash transactions over $10,000. Federal law
also prohibits “structuring” deposits in amounts under $10,000 to skirt
the reporting requirement.
But making frequent cash deposits under $10,000 is only a
crime if someone deliberately intends to evade filing those reports.
Lyndon had no such intention. According to his niece, who usually made
deposits, a bank teller told her that depositing less than $10,000 would
avoid burdensome paperwork. Moreover, forfeiting Lyndon’s cash would
violate his constitutional right to due process and the Eighth
Amendment’s protection against “excessive fines.”
Lyndon McLellan outside of his small business, L&M Convenience Mart in Fairmont, North Carolina.
This travesty of justice should not have happened. Last October, after The New York Times ran a front-page feature on unjust structuring seizures, the IRS announced
it “will no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds
associated solely with ‘legal source’ structuring cases.” In other
words, Americans who earned their money lawfully would not be targeted.
The U.S. Department of Justice made a similar shift in late March.
During a congressional hearing in February, IRS Commissioner
John Koskinen personally apologized to victims of IRS seizures,
offering his condolences to “anyone who got caught up in this.” Koskinen even alluded to Lyndon’s case, noting, “Somebody’s not following the policy.”
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Law & Regulation
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IRS Seizes Over $100,000 From Innocent Small Business Owner, Despite Promise To End Raids
Continued from page 1
Nick Sibilla
, Contributor
may have missed that memo. Less than two months after the IRS
publically announced its new policy, the federal government filed a
civil forfeiture complaint to take Lyndon’s cash.
The IRS policy change was supposed to end a long trail of similar abuses. A grocery store in Michigan had their entire bank account seized by the IRS for suspected structuring. That same fate befell the owners of a restaurant in rural Iowa and a convenience-store distribution business
in Long Island. Like Lyndon, none of these entrepreneurs were ever
charged with a crime. Thankfully, after the Institute for Justice
launched litigation, these individuals recovered their property.
Others were not so fortunate. According to a recent IJ report,
between 2005 and 2012, the IRS seized over $242 million from 2,500
cases for alleged structuring violations. In a third of these cases,
only making transactions under $10,000 prompted a seizure—the government
did not accuse the owner of any other wrongdoing. Among all structuring
forfeitures, the median taken was under $28,000. That’s far removed
from cracking down on the nation’s Bernie Madoffs and Saul Goodmans.
“All I want is the government to follow the new rules in this case,”
Lyndon said. “Nobody is above the law—not even the federal government.
If they’re wrong, they’re wrong.”
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