The U.S. District Court in Colorado blocked a couple from selling an illegitimate tax scheme that they claimed would enable people to avoid paying federal income tax by renouncing "United States citizenship" and claiming "American citizenship" instead.

The Court issued a preliminary injunction on November 3, 2003 requiring Austin Gary Cooper and his wife Martha E. Cooper, of Loveland, Colorado (although originally from Florida) to stop promoting the tax scheme and to post the court order on their Web site. They are also obliged to hand over a list of customers who purchased their materials to the Justice Department.

According to the Justice Department, the couple sold as many as 2,000 of the $1,600 packages promoting the tax avoidance scam, which is popular among tax protesters and members of the anti-government sovereign citizen movement. The packages included various documents and instructions for filing them with federal agencies. The Coopers also offered a $2,400 course for a "Law Barrister" degree, authorities said.

The Coopers promoted their "expatriation" scheme through the Ten Foundation and Taking Back America, which they founded in Fort Collins, Colorado. The couple traveled around the country, holding seminars to promote their scheme.

The Coopers' argument is based on one of the longstanding beliefs of the sovereign citizen movement, that the ratification of the 14th Amendment created two different classes of citizenship in the United States. According to the right-wing extremist newspaper Oregon Observer, at one seminar in Spokane in November 2001, Cooper told an audience of 150 people that "American citizens are to abide six laws; U.S. citizens are subject to 60 million statutes."

Austin Cooper, who calls himself a "Barrister at Law," responded to the court's decision by saying that he did not recognize the authority of the judge and other federal officials, adding that he his group "charged them with treason."

In 1990, Cooper was convicted in Florida on similar charges, including failing to pay taxes and filing false withholding tax certificates. He served 22 months in prison.

For more information, see Extremism in America's guide to the Tax Protest Movement.

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