OWINGS MILLS TAX PROTESTER GUILTY OF FORGERY
61-year-old Woman Contended Slave Descendants Not Subject to Taxation

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. and Comptroller William Donald Schaefer jointly announced today that Dolores E. Scott, 61, an Owings Mills pediatric nurse who owes over $20,000 in back taxes, pled guilty today to one count of forgery, for having forged two documents last year in order to get lifted the garnishment the Comptroller had inserted against her wages. The Comptroller’s Office found out about the alleged forgeries, re-instituted the garnishments, and referred the matter to the Attorney General for prosecution.

According to the Statement of Facts, each of the forged documents were sent by fax and included a line at the top of each document that read, "From Scott Residence". Additionally, one of the forged documents Scott submitted was signed in the name of an "Elaine Batiste," who supposedly was a Revenue Agent in the Compliance Division of the Comptroller’s Office. There is no such person working anywhere in the Comptroller’s Office. It is curious to note, however, that "Elaine" is Ms. Scott’s middle name.

Underlying her dispute with the Comptroller’s Office is Scott’s belief that as an African American descendant of slaves brought to America against their will, she was not a citizen subject to income taxation. She has lost that argument in every court that has heard it, the most recent being the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in a reported opinion, Scott v. Comptroller of the Treasury, 105 Md. App. 215 (1995).

Scott’s battle with the taxing authorities is not limited to the Maryland Comptroller’s Office, but included the Internal Revenue Service as well. There the problem escalated to an arrest, due to her abusive and harassing conduct involving a federal revenue officer assigned to her case. In May 1991, the U. S. Attorney’s Office filed obstruction charges against Ms. Scott, charging her with threatening the life of the revenue officer and of her family. Ms. Scott entered a guilty plea to the charge in July 1991, and was sentenced to three years of supervised probation, with the special condition that she not visit the I.R.S. without permission of her probation officer or in the company of her tax attorney.

The maximum sentence for forgery is 10 years incarceration and a $1,000 fine. Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Cavanaugh set sentencing for April 16, 2003, at 9:30 a.m.

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