Home >  Local News

Friday, April 25, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The government wants additional prison time for Karl Frank Kleinpaste, a former Carnegie Mellon University computer programmer who last year tried unsuccessfully to convince a jury that he didn't have to pay taxes.

He represented himself, even to the point of cross-examining himself on the stand, but ended up convicted in November of willful failure to pay taxes, tax evasion and making false loan applications.

Now the U.S. attorney's office is asking a federal judge to give him extra prison time for perjury and deliberately "flooding the court with frivolous filings ... designed to waste the time and resources of the court and the government."

U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster will sentence Kleinpaste, of South Beaver, on May 23, although that date may not be certain because the sentencing has already been postponed three times.

Kleinpaste, who formerly worked for Lycos Inc., was facing about three years behind bars, but now could get more.

In his motion for a higher sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Conway blasted Kleinpaste for filing 47 pretrial motions with "no bases in law or in fact."

Among the filings were some 100 pages of attempts to dismiss the indictment by arguing that U.S. District Court did not have jurisdiction, an affidavit claiming Kleinpaste is not a citizen of the United States, and a demand that Lancaster recuse himself from the case for not filling out a "declaration of impartiality" form Kleinpaste had prepared.

Conway also cited Kleinpaste's "pleasure in bombarding the Internal Revenue Service with numerous nonsensical and ridiculous letters and other submissions." Kleinpaste had even sued the IRS and auditor Gavin Chafin, but the lawsuit was quickly dismissed.

In addition to the filings, Conway said Kleinpaste should be punished for his long-term participation in tax fraud dating to 1994 and his attempts to convince others, on the radio and on his Web site, to stop paying their taxes.

"By presenting arguments for not filing tax returns that he knew were incorrect," Conway said, "he risked misleading gullible individuals into believing that they also did not have to file their tax returns."

Although Kleinpaste didn't belong to any tax protester group, most of his arguments parrot ideas commonly held by tax protesters, such as the claim that the IRS does not legally exist or that the income tax is voluntary.

His trial was bizarre by any measure. He refused to hire a lawyer, electing to sit in the witness box and ask himself questions, then answer himself. He also told the jury he knew more about tax law than either the prosecutor or the judge.

The jury deliberated about an hour before finding him guilty on all 10 counts.