A Brunswick man was sentenced Thursday to serve a year and a day in federal prison for charges of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and corruptly trying to impede the agency’s attempts to collect taxes he owed.
F. William Messier, 71, also was ordered by Judge D. Brock Hornby to pay a fine of $15,000, file tax returns going back to 2005 and pay back income tax to that year, estimated by the government to be $168,376, not including interest and penalties.
Messier could have been sentenced to up to eight years on the two charges.
Messier and co-conspirator David E. Robinson, 78, were convicted in April after a five-day jury trial.
Robinson, who was convicted only of the conspiracy charge, also had been scheduled for sentencing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland, but it was postponed to Oct. 5. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Doing business as Oak Hill Communications, Messier failed to pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars earned from leases on telecommunications towers on his Brunswick property, according to testimony during the trial.
From 1999 to 2014, Messier provided false tax documents to customers and obstructed IRS collection activities, according to court records.
The town of Brunswick used a tower there for its emergency communications system. Efforts to reach Brunswick Deputy Police Chief Marc Hagen, who last September said the department was aware of Messier’s situation and was taking a wait-and-see approach in regard to its equipment, were unsuccessful Thursday evening.
In 2012, the IRS assessed $172,000 in taxes and interest for the years 2000 to 2004 against Messier.
According to testimony from witnesses, after the IRS sent notices of levy to Messier’s customers, Messier and Robinson tried to obstruct and impede the IRS by presenting the IRS with a fake and worthless money order for the amount owed.
Messier and Robinson also urged customers not to honor the levies or to pay the IRS, and to pay Messier in cash to conceal their payments from the IRS.
The two also sent false documents to the IRS and sent threatening and misleading correspondence to customers urging them not to cooperate with the IRS, according to testimony.
Messier and Robinson co-authored a book about the IRS, “Maine Lawsuit Against the IRS: For Unfair Trade Practices.”
During the trial, Messier’s attorney, Michael Minns, said his client failed to pay taxes and tried to obstruct the IRS, but did so because he was “delusional.” Robinson’s lawyer, Joel Vincent, said his client believes that every U.S. citizen has a “secret” account created at birth, and Robinson encouraged Messier to pay his tax debt from that account.
Prosecutor Karen Kelly, assistant chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax division, said the men knew what they were doing and intentionally tried to block the government’s collection efforts.
Messier’s daughter, Lisa Pelletier, testifying at the trial as a government witness, said she gave the IRS all the evidence she had against her father after he abruptly withdrew an offer to her and her husband to have them take over his business when they expressed their discomfort with not paying taxes.
The judge also sentenced Messier to serve three years of supervised release after completing his prison term.
Before the sentencing, Minns had asked the judge for probation, house arrest and community service in lieu of prison time because of Messier’s “advanced age and fragile health.”
Messier was born with only one kidney, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 and had his prostate removed the next year, according to court documents.
Messier’s primary care physician is quoted in court documents as saying that Messier has a condition in which, when faced with stress, his body produces a chemical that prepares the body for “flight or fight” and that “in prolonged or excessive amounts they can cause high blood pressure and considerable organ damage in the body.”
Staff Writer Whit Richardson contributed to this report.
Scott Dolan can be contacted at 791-6304 or at:
Twitter: @scottddolan
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