Reparations scam brings prison term

[MORTARDUDE]

Reparations scam brings prison term

Mobile Register

September 10, 2003


By JOE DANBORN

A federal judge on Tuesday in Mobile sentenced a part-time accountant, part-time preacher to nearly 3 years in prison for duping people into thinking they would receive tax refunds for past government wrongs against black taxpayers if they paid him to prepare their returns.

U.S. District Judge Charles Butler Jr. also ordered James Buckley, alias James Dean, to repay about $59,000 total to his approximately 500 victims. "They're all across the country," Assistant U.S. Attorney Vickie Davis said of the victims, each of whom is to receive $120.

The punishment was the maximum allowable under federal sentencing guidelines.

Buckley, of Mobile, pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of making false statements to the Internal Revenue Service and one count of mail fraud.

Prosecutors agreed to drop the 14 other charges that a grand jury had brought against him.

Buckley first got into trouble more than a year ago, when the Better Business Bureau of South Alabama began fielding a slew of questions and informal complaints about his businesses. From an office on Halls Mill Road, Buckley operated the Second Class Citizens' Committee and Dean and Bass Associates, which was later renamed Buckley and Bass.

The Second Class Citizens' Committee solicited customers through a Web site that promised federal refunds of more than $40,000 per person for supposed tax overpayments made by blacks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Blacks were due the refunds because their forebears were denied some or all rights during that time, Buckley con tended, and -- for a $120-$125 fee -- he could help get the money.

The IRS offers no such refund.

Buckley also staged seminars at hotels and churches throughout the region in which he recruited others to spread the word and help prepare tax forms, according to court records. Davis told Butler that Buckley's presentations of himself as a man of the cloth in a church setting made his scheme easier for people to swallow, and was therefore more reprehensible.

Similar scams have popped up around the South, authorities have said, and at least two others have resulted in indictments in Georgia and Mississippi.

[Jerry D]

Glad to hear some of these flim-flam artist getting their just deserts