Two Face Penalty in $500,000 Slave Reparations Case

Reebo · Posted: 10/24/03 - 12:51 Post subject:

Yahoo news

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WARSAW, Va. - Crystal Foster's father advised her to spend the $500,000 income tax refund she got two years ago. When the government came looking for its money, the Fosters said it was their rightful reparations, since their ancestors were slaves.

Though there is no federal reparations program, Foster had spent the money in eight days, buying a $40,000 Mercedes Benz, paying off her student loans and helping her brother pay for his first year at Virginia Tech.

Foster's father, Robert Lee Foster, prepared her tax forms and was convicted along with his daughter of trying to defraud the government. He maintains he did the right thing.

"Black people are not treated as humans, but as things by the U.S. government," he said in an interview at the Northern Neck Regional Jail. "We were used as resources to enrich this country and we get no inheritance from the wealth we brought."

According to the Internal Revenue Service (news - web sites), more than 80,000 tax returns were filed in 2001 seeking nonexistent slavery tax credits, totaling $2.7 billion. More than $30 million was mistakenly paid out in slave reparations in 2000 and part of 2001.

That number dropped significantly last year after stepped-up scrutiny of tax returns and an aggressive media campaign targeted against scam artists promising to secure tax credits for blacks.

But the government has also begun quietly cracking down on filers of false claims after years of looking the other way.

Foster and his daughter each were convicted in July of conspiracy to defraud the government. Robert Foster also was convicted of four counts and Crystal Foster of one count of making false claims.

Both were scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Thursday. Defendants in similar cases have received up to seven years in prison.

The case against Robert Foster has taken several bizarre turns.

Foster renounced his U.S. citizenship in jail and professed allegiance to the Moab Tiara Cherokee Kituwah Nation, an obscure Charlotte, N.C., group whose members claim they are descendants of African Moors who came to the New World before European colonialists.

Foster filed papers in U.S. District Court seeking to vacate the judgment against him based on lack of jurisdiction by the U.S. government. The judge rejected the motion.

Foster also tried unsuccessfully to fire his attorney, Thomas Johnson, and hire an "indigenous attorney" who identified himself as justice secretary for the Kituwah Nation.

Foster, a 51-year-old tax return preparer, said he endured years of racial discrimination during his career with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (news - web sites) hospital in Richmond. In 2000, he sued his former employer, claiming he was passed over for promotion as an accountant because he was black. The case was settled for $5,000, leaving Foster bitter.

"I was picked out to be harassed," he said. "I was always outspoken."

Foster, who admitted he called U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams a "white devil" in court, said he doesn't hate anybody. "But I do hate the actions of some people."

The issue of slavery reparations has long simmered in the United States, but some say it may be gaining momentum.

Blacks last year filed lawsuits in several states against a number of large corporations, alleging they profited from slavery for two centuries and that blacks should be compensated.

More recently, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said that if elected president he would order a study of reparations for descendants of slaves.

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Lamishaw said the idea of filing reparations claims may have originated with a 1993 Essence magazine editorial urging blacks to seek refunds of $43,206 per household as a delinquent tax rebate. The magazine said the figure was the modern-day equivalent of 40 acres and a mule, which Congress voted to give former slaves following the Civil War. The deal was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson.

Foster said he increased the total tenfold to account for inflation. According to the U.S. attorney's office, Foster prepared returns claiming more than $3.6 million in reparations, most for about $500,000 each.

In the refund that was mistakenly paid out, 25-year-old Crystal Foster claimed she had overpaid taxes on long-term capital gains in 2000. She listed the fictitious "Black Capital Investments" fund of the U.S. Treasury as the source of the gains.

Foster received her refund check in October 2001. Prosecutors say only about half the money has been recovered.

Johnson, Robert Foster's attorney, declined to comment on the case. But Foster said from jail he did not believe he broke the law.

"This was not an effort to defraud the U.S. government," he said. "This was purely a protest against the U.S. government."
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Somebody should tell Mr. Foster that the IRS treats everybody like "things", not just black people

Two Face Penalty in $500,000 Slave Reparations Case

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