HARTFORD, Conn. — A federal appeals court rejected the appeal Monday of a former Connecticut police officer convicted of trying to get the judge in his home foreclosure case in trouble with the IRS through a bogus tax filing.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York dismissed the arguments of Raymond McLaughlin, who said the federal court system had no jurisdiction over him.
The judges called McLaughlin’s argument consistent with the “Sovereign Citizen” ideology in which proponents believe the federal government is illegitimate and its laws not binding.
“McLaughlin’s argument here goes to the very heart of our authority to hear Federal criminal cases,” the ruling said. “It raises an issue that warrants a clear statement from this Court, to deter future litigants from making similar claims.”
A federal jury in Hartford convicted McLaughlin, a former Windsor police officer, in July 2018 of making a false statement on a federal tax form. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and appealed his conviction to the 2nd Circuit court.
Federal prosecutors said McLaughlin, 46, of East Hartford, sent documents to the IRS in 2014 falsely stating that he had paid Judge Robert Vacchelli and the court system about $332,000, with the apparent goal of getting the judge in trouble with the IRS for not paying taxes on that income.
If the IRS had treated that filing as true, the judge would have been assessed an additional $110,000 in taxes and his pending reappointment could have been placed in jeopardy, prosecutors said.
In 2012, Vacchelli issued a foreclosure order against McLaughlin and his wife for failing to pay their mortgage for six years. After the order, McLaughlin filed about 44 motions seeking to vacate, reopen or set aside the judgement, all of which Vacchelli rejected.
A federal judge called McLaughlin’s motions “meritless and often incoherent.”
McLaughlin, who represented himself in the appeal, lost his police job after he started espousing “sovereign citizen” views, stopped writing traffic tickets and demanded Windsor officials stop withholding taxes from his pay, the Journal Inquirer has reported.
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