UPDATED 10:21 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A pro se litigant whose filing was docketed yesterday in the AdSurfDaily case used a phone number associated with a defunct credit-repair website that once advertised “Mortgage Elimination,” “Debt Elimination,” “Credit Restoration,” “Asset Restructuring,” “Off Shore Investments” and “Deciphering of Taxes.”
The name of the filer also is associated in web records with the Utah branch of the We The People Congress, an arm of the We The People Foundation, a controversial nonprofit organization founded by tax protester Robert Schulz.
Schulz, an engineer from Queensbury, N.Y., is known for pro se pleadings and clashing with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service. The Justice Department has described Schulz as a “notorious tax defier” who was found in contempt of court for not complying with an order handed down by a federal judge.
Among other things, the We The People Foundation was accused by the Justice Department in 2007 of marketing “a nationwide tax-fraud scheme designed to help customers evade their federal tax liabilities and to interfere with the administration of the internal revenue laws.”
Schulz and We The People started offering a “Tax Termination Package” and organized a project known as “Operation Stop Withholding” in 2003, according to prosecutors. The government described the effort as a “campaign to help customers illegally stop withholding, filing and paying federal taxes.”
In August 2007, a federal judge ordered Schulz and We The People to stop marketing the tax scheme. Judge Thomas McAvoy said the organization was exposing customers to criminal liability, ordering We The People to provide customers a copy of the order and to turn over information about customers who had used a We The People tax kit.
Schulz initially did not comply with the order. In April 2008, he was found to be in contempt of court, and prosecutors said he faced possible jail time and fines of $2,000 per day until he complied. Schulz complied after the contempt finding.
Christian Oesch, the pro se filer in the ASD case, used a phone number once associated with GlobalDebtSolution.com. The site now is a parked page, but once offered a host of debt-elimination services, according to web archives. The phone number recorded in the archives is the same phone number listed on Oesch’s pro se pleading in the ASD case.
The name Christian Oesch appears in web records as the Utah state coordinator for the We The People Congress, and an email address associated with the name pointed to the GlobalDebtSolution domain.
“Learn about what the IRS, the Bankers, your CPA, Tax Attorney or Politicians do not want you to know . . .” the site said in 2003.
An audio file captured in the archives is titled “Banking Fraud.” A narrator who identified himself as Tom Shaw explained that bankers “control all major media” and that the U.S. Revolutionary War was fought over banking issues.
“Now, we need to get this information out to as many people as [we] can about what they’ve done to us with the banking system,” the narrator said.
Oesch filed the ASD motion as president of a Washington company known as Human Economic Resource Solutions LTD.
It has been known for months that some people within the ASD organization were in the credit-repair business and also were associated with a group or groups who viewed banking in general and the Federal Reserve in particular as a conspiracy.
Beginning in February 2009, individuals associated with a culture of pro se pleadings and rants against the government began to inject themselves into the legal battle ASD is confronting. At the same time, AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf firm with close management, membership and promoters’ ties to ASD, switched to a “private association” structure.
AVG says it is based in Uruguay, but its Articles of Association say its authority is derived from the U.S. Constitution.