Since the Booths had succeeded in transferring three of their Bakersfield properties to their legal trusts,* they no longer owned or had any authority over these properties. In 1996 through 1997 (still a full year or more before they even met Mike Ioane), they put in quit claim deeds for their various properties, which meant they had no further interest in them. They then turned the trusts over to friends, Lorne McCan and Tomas Rio. The trust managers later sold the properties to the Bakersfield Properties and Trust co. , which eventually sold the properties to Acacia Corporate Management LLC in 2005-07 for good consideration…this a full 9 to 11 years after Booth formed his family trusts.
In October of 2000-2001, a full five years after the initial creation of their family and charitable trusts, Dr. Stephen Booth and his wife were accused by the IRS of owing 2.3 million dollars in back taxes. The IRS began to send them letters of intent to levy. Then they tried to put liens on the real properties which they thought the Booths owned. The IRS particularly wanted the three properties once owned by the Booths which had been placed in trust. The IRS could not simply seize these properties for back taxes. However they knew the Booths did not have 2.3 million dollars in assets. As the Booths did various deals with the IRS, the liens and levies would be removed. Then they would be applied again. Then removed again.* It became a typical IRS log-jam. So in 2007 the Booths’ lawyers finally asked the 9th District court, to dismiss the IRS case.* The IRS opposed this motion to dismiss in the strongest terms possible,* because they knew that they would lose their case and any claim to the properties if the judge dismissed their case in District court. After this, sets of demands to dismiss and oppositions to those dismissals flew fast and furious between the Booths, their lawyers and the IRS. Yet the presiding judge for the 9th district, Anthony Ishii, would not make any decision for or against the IRS or the Booths. All these cases are still pending any sort of judicial review.
The IRS was attempting to claim the real properties belonged to the Booths. No liens were ever filed against the trusts themselves, only against the Booth’s properties. Then the IRS began claiming that the Booths owed them significant monies and that their so-called trusts were all shams, created with the intent to “hide assets.” (Something the IRS claims in nearly every audit.) In 2007 Acacia, the rightful owner of the Bakersfield properties had to sue the IRS in a Quiet Title suit because the IRS put a lien against Acacia’s property claiming that Acacia was alter ego of Dr. Booth.
This is the nuttiest thing I’ve ever heard of. The IRS was trying to say that the Booths put their property in trust, because they fully intended, with Mike Ioane’s collusion (which they could only get years later, by chance) to commit a fraud against the government…in the future! This is a case of the most utter nonsense I have ever heard.
Let’s see if we can untangle this web further in my next article.
tomhorne1900 