7 ms·

Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes

76 points by vipivip 15y ago

bugsy 15y ago
I remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success. Saipan is one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth. As a US trust territory, for many years they had slave plantations that produced clothing for chinese companies which was labelled "Made in USA". Many workers were kept under brutal conditions, raped, beaten and killed. The Saipanese are mostly incredibly lazy and loved this system as it allowed them to have houses full of slave servants and great wealth without ever having to work for it. It all collapsed a few years ago, but there's a close to 100% chance that they are the ones running the scam in this current case. edit: Keep downvoting this, monkeys! I have no doubt I am one of a small handful of people on HN that has intimate experience of how Saipan works and how corrupt this place is. My post gives true insight to what is going on there. Imagine the worst fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town straight out of the movie Deliverance, but then give them dictatorial control over outsiders, a total lack of desire to work and a strong desire to dominate control and cheat others and you have Saipan. It's like a stereotypical town thought to exist in the backwoods of Arkansas, but it's real, slavery is still legal, and it's part of the US. Absolutely anything involving Saipanese officials that has a money angle for them is a total scam. Since their slave factories collapsed, they have been in desperate straits to steal what they can. I totally believe the CEOs explanation that they backdated their tax code specifically to target him, and then never served him of any real notice of it until now, after they've gotten a bunch of judgements against him in which he had no chance to represent himself because he didn't even know there was a case about this. That is exactly how they work. They are incredibly conniving and will work every system to get what they want. Typical small town american fundamentalist hillbillies, but in a pacific island trust territory. These comments apply to the people in control there. There's also the regular people who hate what has been done to their island over the years, many are ostensibly good people. It's the corrupt people in power that are the troublemakers, and dealing with them is exactly exactly like Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist - which the Saipanese basically are. The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system. And if you had no idea about the slavery and corruption and you are downvoting this you are only proving how mentally you are exactly like them. This post tells you the truth about Saipan, a place that until just now you probably never heard of. Ignorant fools.
- raganwald 15y ago
  If I earn $1.00 and owe 20 cents in taxes, I’ve earned my success in the amount of eighty cents’ worth of financial prosperity. If I keep the entire dollar, I have earned my eighty cents AND I owe 20 cents in unpaid taxes. This gentleman has not been convicted of any crime, but it is certainly possible that he has “earned his success” AND that he owes money for unpaid taxes.
  - yardie 15y ago
    did you not read the part where they backdated the changes? So if you owe 5 cent in taxes and pay that and then a few years later the gov't says "we changed the code you owe us 50 cents and this retroactively applies to the last few years." You would be perfectly okay with that?
    - raganwald 15y ago
      As a citizen, I would be perfectly ok with hiring a lawyers and tax accountant and disputing the charges using the existing system we have for disputing taxes and/or having unjust laws stricken off the books.
- gjm11 15y ago
  Downvoted purely for "Keep downvoting this, monkeys!". HN would be better off without that sort of nonsense.
  - bugsy 15y ago
    That's part of the edit after an extremely useful post with insight into the reality started getting downvoted because it didn't conform with the political or whatever beliefs of the downvoters. HN would be better without the pathetic reactionary losers who use downvoting to promote their political beliefs.
    - krschultz 15y ago
      I imagine the downvotes have a lot more to do with the way you wrote and not what you wrote.
Hyena 15y ago
Stories like this convince me that many of the most sophisticated cases of tax evasion are actually the product of an OCD-like behavior.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nl 15y ago
A devotee of est, a faddish self-empowerment regimen of that era What is est? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful. Edit: found it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training
- gruseom 15y ago
  Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example, there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion, 60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it. It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the 1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same criticisms.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Now there's a blast from the past!
- blackguy 15y ago
  it might be bad form to just be unabashedly for anyone or anything in this world, and, the way the whole thing occurs to me is that werner erhard is one of the GREAT misunderstood mysteries of our time. He is just an average guy who really got into what he was into which was empowering others effectively, I have never met e person who was more compassionate and useful and humble and not caring about $ than this guy, yet the media and anyone with a grievance promoted and repromoted and repromoted a view quite the opposite of him and that is what stuck and what gets repeated when referring to him. Just as well, being in the public spot light sucks and is one of the most useless grotesque phenomenas in society today in my opinion. what artist or politician or person exercising some kind of leadership in life does not inevitably experience the "crowned" turning on them? the world would be a better place if there war more werner erhards, people who made the success of all humanity as their own personal business.
Steko 15y ago
I also remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success... who then decided to use it to become a tax cheat for the rest of his life. Regardless of what you think about the Northern Marianas, this guy doesn't deserve anyone's pity, he's been a tax cheat for well over 2 decades. And no I don't "believe the CEO's story that he was never served", that's horseshit. He left Saipan for a reason, to continue to dodge taxes any way he could.
nowarninglabel 15y ago
Saipan is indeed one of the most corrupt backwards places on Earth. I know because I've actually been there and got to know some of the locals and politics of the place while there. To say more eloquently what bugsy was trying to express, while it is unclear if Mr. Millard did commit a crime, you must take into account that the people chasing him for supposed tax abuse are some of the most corrupt people on Earth. Much of that information is available on Wikipedia, but just read some of the websites of ex-pats and such and you will get a good idea. Thus, I would take anything said by anyone in the Saipanese government with a large grain of salt. Furthermore, even if Mr. Millard is guilty, if the Saipan government gets his money, it will be a negative outcome for everyone.
- Steko 15y ago
  A negative outcome for all of us would be to have a 20+ year tax cheat end up owing nothing. You can bet the plutocracy will be watching this case closely.
  - dhbanes 15y ago
    Excuse me, but why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion? The fact that the WSJ claims him to be does not make it so. Here is some more information about Millard, you can find it by restricting your google search to items published before 9/1/11 - http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_tax-law http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_t... It seems there was more talk about the fact that Saipan was trying get his money by changing their tax laws, not that he fled the US because he was wanted for tax evasion as the WSJ article makes it sound. edit: for clarity
    - Steko 15y ago
      "why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion?" Why wouldn't I believe it? As you yourself mention, the WSJ said so. At least one jury decided he did. Judges have reviewed the facts and issued a number of gag order backed subpoenas. 50+ shell companies. Disappears from view for 20 years. etc. Occam's razor, QED. Cmon, you're going to bat for this guy with a 25 year old article that predates the "alleged" evasion?
pg 15y ago
Structurally this article reads like one that has been "placed" by a PR firm. That combined with e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption makes me feel like whatever the truth is, it's not exactly as described here. I'm not saying the guy hasn't done anything wrong, just that I suspect we're not getting the whole story.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  Agreed. The guy may be a crook, but something about that piece doesn't sit well. For instance, why are all these private law firms spending all this time and money chasing this guy around? Certainly not out of some kind of goodwill on their part. Do they get a cut of what's collected? Are they being paid by somebody? I don't ask because I want to impeach their motives -- it's just a critical part of any story. Any "chase" story has a chaser and a person chased. We're missing key details. I would also want to hear from the guy in question. What's his side of the story? Even horrible wartime criminals end up on CNN telling us all their side of the story, but this guy gets nothing. Plus, it's obvious that as a reader I am supposed to have a reaction. Something like "That cheap bastard! I hope they jack the jail up and put him underneath" or some such. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the author trying to push my buttons along those lines. I find being manipulated like that uncomfortable. Not a quality article in my book. But heck, that's not saying the guy didn't do something wrong. From this article, I just don't know one way or another. All I know is that he has money and that people are chasing him for it.
zandorg 15y ago
Ah, a blast from the past. I was reading Once Upon a Time in Computerland by Steven Levy. Not a bad book, but I wondered what happened to Millard. Now I know!

76 points by vipivip 15y ago

bugsy 15y ago

I remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success. Saipan is one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth. As a US trust territory, for many years they had slave plantations that produced clothing for chinese companies which was labelled "Made in USA". Many workers were kept under brutal conditions, raped, beaten and killed. The Saipanese are mostly incredibly lazy and loved this system as it allowed them to have houses full of slave servants and great wealth without ever having to work for it. It all collapsed a few years ago, but there's a close to 100% chance that they are the ones running the scam in this current case. edit: Keep downvoting this, monkeys! I have no doubt I am one of a small handful of people on HN that has intimate experience of how Saipan works and how corrupt this place is. My post gives true insight to what is going on there. Imagine the worst fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town straight out of the movie Deliverance, but then give them dictatorial control over outsiders, a total lack of desire to work and a strong desire to dominate control and cheat others and you have Saipan. It's like a stereotypical town thought to exist in the backwoods of Arkansas, but it's real, slavery is still legal, and it's part of the US. Absolutely anything involving Saipanese officials that has a money angle for them is a total scam. Since their slave factories collapsed, they have been in desperate straits to steal what they can. I totally believe the CEOs explanation that they backdated their tax code specifically to target him, and then never served him of any real notice of it until now, after they've gotten a bunch of judgements against him in which he had no chance to represent himself because he didn't even know there was a case about this. That is exactly how they work. They are incredibly conniving and will work every system to get what they want. Typical small town american fundamentalist hillbillies, but in a pacific island trust territory. These comments apply to the people in control there. There's also the regular people who hate what has been done to their island over the years, many are ostensibly good people. It's the corrupt people in power that are the troublemakers, and dealing with them is exactly exactly like Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist - which the Saipanese basically are. The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system. And if you had no idea about the slavery and corruption and you are downvoting this you are only proving how mentally you are exactly like them. This post tells you the truth about Saipan, a place that until just now you probably never heard of. Ignorant fools.

raganwald 15y ago
If I earn $1.00 and owe 20 cents in taxes, I’ve earned my success in the amount of eighty cents’ worth of financial prosperity. If I keep the entire dollar, I have earned my eighty cents AND I owe 20 cents in unpaid taxes. This gentleman has not been convicted of any crime, but it is certainly possible that he has “earned his success” AND that he owes money for unpaid taxes.
- yardie 15y ago
  did you not read the part where they backdated the changes? So if you owe 5 cent in taxes and pay that and then a few years later the gov't says "we changed the code you owe us 50 cents and this retroactively applies to the last few years." You would be perfectly okay with that?
  - raganwald 15y ago
    As a citizen, I would be perfectly ok with hiring a lawyers and tax accountant and disputing the charges using the existing system we have for disputing taxes and/or having unjust laws stricken off the books.
gjm11 15y ago
Downvoted purely for "Keep downvoting this, monkeys!". HN would be better off without that sort of nonsense.
- bugsy 15y ago
  That's part of the edit after an extremely useful post with insight into the reality started getting downvoted because it didn't conform with the political or whatever beliefs of the downvoters. HN would be better without the pathetic reactionary losers who use downvoting to promote their political beliefs.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    I imagine the downvotes have a lot more to do with the way you wrote and not what you wrote.

Hyena 15y ago

Stories like this convince me that many of the most sophisticated cases of tax evasion are actually the product of an OCD-like behavior.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

nl 15y ago

A devotee of est, a faddish self-empowerment regimen of that era What is est? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful. Edit: found it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

gruseom 15y ago
Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example, there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion, 60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it. It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the 1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same criticisms.
Vivtek 15y ago
Now there's a blast from the past!
blackguy 15y ago
it might be bad form to just be unabashedly for anyone or anything in this world, and, the way the whole thing occurs to me is that werner erhard is one of the GREAT misunderstood mysteries of our time. He is just an average guy who really got into what he was into which was empowering others effectively, I have never met e person who was more compassionate and useful and humble and not caring about $ than this guy, yet the media and anyone with a grievance promoted and repromoted and repromoted a view quite the opposite of him and that is what stuck and what gets repeated when referring to him. Just as well, being in the public spot light sucks and is one of the most useless grotesque phenomenas in society today in my opinion. what artist or politician or person exercising some kind of leadership in life does not inevitably experience the "crowned" turning on them? the world would be a better place if there war more werner erhards, people who made the success of all humanity as their own personal business.

Steko 15y ago

I also remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success... who then decided to use it to become a tax cheat for the rest of his life. Regardless of what you think about the Northern Marianas, this guy doesn't deserve anyone's pity, he's been a tax cheat for well over 2 decades. And no I don't "believe the CEO's story that he was never served", that's horseshit. He left Saipan for a reason, to continue to dodge taxes any way he could.

nowarninglabel 15y ago

Saipan is indeed one of the most corrupt backwards places on Earth. I know because I've actually been there and got to know some of the locals and politics of the place while there. To say more eloquently what bugsy was trying to express, while it is unclear if Mr. Millard did commit a crime, you must take into account that the people chasing him for supposed tax abuse are some of the most corrupt people on Earth. Much of that information is available on Wikipedia, but just read some of the websites of ex-pats and such and you will get a good idea. Thus, I would take anything said by anyone in the Saipanese government with a large grain of salt. Furthermore, even if Mr. Millard is guilty, if the Saipan government gets his money, it will be a negative outcome for everyone.

Steko 15y ago
A negative outcome for all of us would be to have a 20+ year tax cheat end up owing nothing. You can bet the plutocracy will be watching this case closely.
- dhbanes 15y ago
  Excuse me, but why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion? The fact that the WSJ claims him to be does not make it so. Here is some more information about Millard, you can find it by restricting your google search to items published before 9/1/11 - http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_tax-law http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_t... It seems there was more talk about the fact that Saipan was trying get his money by changing their tax laws, not that he fled the US because he was wanted for tax evasion as the WSJ article makes it sound. edit: for clarity
  - Steko 15y ago
    "why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion?" Why wouldn't I believe it? As you yourself mention, the WSJ said so. At least one jury decided he did. Judges have reviewed the facts and issued a number of gag order backed subpoenas. 50+ shell companies. Disappears from view for 20 years. etc. Occam's razor, QED. Cmon, you're going to bat for this guy with a 25 year old article that predates the "alleged" evasion?

pg 15y ago

Structurally this article reads like one that has been "placed" by a PR firm. That combined with e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption makes me feel like whatever the truth is, it's not exactly as described here. I'm not saying the guy hasn't done anything wrong, just that I suspect we're not getting the whole story.

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
Agreed. The guy may be a crook, but something about that piece doesn't sit well. For instance, why are all these private law firms spending all this time and money chasing this guy around? Certainly not out of some kind of goodwill on their part. Do they get a cut of what's collected? Are they being paid by somebody? I don't ask because I want to impeach their motives -- it's just a critical part of any story. Any "chase" story has a chaser and a person chased. We're missing key details. I would also want to hear from the guy in question. What's his side of the story? Even horrible wartime criminals end up on CNN telling us all their side of the story, but this guy gets nothing. Plus, it's obvious that as a reader I am supposed to have a reaction. Something like "That cheap bastard! I hope they jack the jail up and put him underneath" or some such. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the author trying to push my buttons along those lines. I find being manipulated like that uncomfortable. Not a quality article in my book. But heck, that's not saying the guy didn't do something wrong. From this article, I just don't know one way or another. All I know is that he has money and that people are chasing him for it.

zandorg 15y ago

Ah, a blast from the past. I was reading Once Upon a Time in Computerland by Steven Levy. Not a bad book, but I wondered what happened to Millard. Now I know!