The unrepentant con man is getting shuffled around a lot, lately; he was in a Colorado prison for a while, then New Hampshire, then Alabama, Georgia, and is now locked up in the Santa Rosa County Jail in Milton, Florida. It was all apparently part of phasing him in for a new trial in Florida.
Hovind, 61, is approaching the end of that sentence, but he is now facing a new suite of charges on allegations that he tried to stymie the government’s efforts to collect on his outstanding debt.
According to an Oct. 21 federal indictment filed against Hovind and Paul John Hansen — a Nebraska man known for his vigorous opposition of government tax and property laws — the duo has been charged with mail fraud and criminal contempt for interfering with the sale of Pensacola properties Hovind was forced to forfeit as a result of the 2006 case.
The indictment says that in 2011, Hansen filed liens on nine of Hovind’s forfeited properties on North Palafox Street, Cummings Road and Oleander Drive.
In 2012 the government was granted an injunction ordering that neither Hovind nor any agent acting on his behalf file or attempt to file any "liens, notices, financing titles and claims of whatever nature … to cloud the title of the properties."
The following year, both Hovind and Hansen reportedly mailed additional documents disputing the ownership of the property.
Both men were charged with mail fraud, attempt and conspiracy to commit mail fraud and criminal contempt. Mail fraud can be punishable by up to 20 years in prison and as much as $500,000 in fines when involving an organization.
20 years sounds high, especially when the original crimes netted him just a 10 year sentence. If you didn’t follow the original case, here’s all you need to know.
According to the IRS, Hovind’s theme park and merchandise sales earned more than $5 million from 1999 to March 2004. About half of that income went to employees who were salaried or were paid hourly wages. The government believes that grew to the point of earning $2 million a year.
Hovind and his wife paid no taxes on the revenue from the park.
It was an open-and-shut case, and Hovind didn’t help himself by trying to argue that he owed no taxes because his property was a sovereign state under God, not the US government, and that he didn’t have to pay taxes on his employees, because they were missionaries, likewise working directly for God.
By the way, you can follow the adventures of Kent Hovind, convict, on his blog. It’s not updated very often — the last direct message from Kent himself was late in 2011 — and now it’s mostly short chronicles of the latest prison shuffle, written by his son, Eric. It all suggests a kind of slow deterioration of the guy.
Don’t miss the Christmas story from 2012. It’ll make you wonder if they don’t shovel the sense of humor out of fanatical Christian brains with a spoon.
Outstanding!
When you find yourself in a hole it’s best to stop digging.
Not too bright, our Kent, is he?
Another victim of sovereign state tax advice.
Not really. His original crime was just trying to cheat on taxes. Certainly that gets Uncle Sam all stirred up, but in terms of severity it really doesn’t compare to an active campaign to impede a government activity. He was actively trying to sabotage the government’s ability to sell off the properties. That’s some pretty heavy shit, all things considered.
And especially stupid after being told to stop his impeding by the courts. They don’t like being ignored.
It must be the magical thinking that makes him so functionally stupid.
God is with me, so how can I fail?
I failed, God must be testing me.
Round two:
God is with me, so how can I fail?
I failed, God must still be testing me.
Repeat as necessary.
Purest schadenfreude.
I, too, thought, “Schadenfreude,” but that means “shameful joy.” What’s shameful about enjoying the spectacle of a con-artist getting what he deserves? I am serenely cheerful about Hovind’s condign punishment.
@Zeno
As far as I know, “schadenfreude” means, roughly, “harm-joy”, i.e. taking joy in harm coming to another person. Shameful joy would be schandenfreude or something like that, if my German is up to snuff (which, admittedly, it isn’t).
Not really, schadenfreude means to take pleasure from others misfortune.
Kent Hovind is one of those people that are truly pathetic. Pathetic in the sense that you would very much indeed feel sorry for the situations he insists putting himself in (not the reaction though, that’s completely fair) if it weren’t for the fact that you knew that any compassion offered to the man would be selfishly exploited.
He is Don Quixote being hounded by peasants angry because he is destroying their wind mills.
“others misfortune”
Ah the misfortune of living in a country with laws that enforces them. At this point, Hovind is effectively deciding he wants to stay in jail as long as possible.
@9 Even if Zeno was right about the translation of the word parts it doesn’t necessarily reflect the meaning of the whole word.
My prediction:
A community service order maximum.
I doubt he will get 20 years, but I also highly doubt that he will get a community service order, since he has shown no remorse for his original actions, which is something which annoys judges. Also, ignoring a court order, while in jail, is a very bad idea.
Hovind owned at least 9 properties in the Pensacola area!? Owning that much property (or more) almost anywhere is a sign of economic well-being. Preaching’s a pretty good business…but we already knew that. So much for those vows to sell everything you own and give it to the poor, blah, blah, blah. Once again a Biblical literalist is only literal when it’s convenient.
JustBen #9:
Yes. “Schade” is also an exclamation of pity or disappointment, like “too bad”. So Schadenfreude is exactly the emotion you feel when you tell someone “oh that’s too bad (for you)” while you try (or not) to suppress a sarcastic grin.
As far as I know “Schandenfreude” does not exist in German. My German isn’t as good as it should be either, but I do live < 5 km from the German border and I am reasonably familiar with the language.
It’s clearly just our Kenyan Mooslim “President” persecuting him for being Christian.
The whole “Sovereign Citizen” stuff is kind of spooky, it’s like a real version of brain washing. Tell people that they are a sovereign nation unto themselves and they will persist in the face of defeat after defeat.
Hey PZ , you’ll find more recent ramblings on 2peter3.com
I think Hovind’s blog moved to the 2peter3 website. His last post there was on 10 September.
I have no citation for this and I couldn’t find one after a cursory look, BUT (oh, this sounds bad) I came across a comment that Hovind’s various trusts and I guess he has several ministries (?) have been attempting to buy up the properties at auction apparently using money in the trusts the government couldn’t seize.
Good grief, I sound like Alex Jones. Ignoring the possibility of Illuminati involvement, anybody else got wind of my likely hot air?
…in order to distract from BENGHAZI! (or whatever the thugs are now ranting about).
No and Yes.
No. Hovind claims to have taken a “vow of poverty” following which he purported to place all his real property in various trusts and made Glen Stoll their trustee.
Unfortunately for too-clever Kent, he continued to pay all the mortgages and other outgoings such as insurance premiums on the properties out of his own funds which actions are inconsistent with his vow of poverty. Furthermore, the court found that Stoll had no powers as trustee which is inconsistent with the claim that the properties were held in a valid trust and outside of Hovind’s control. So, yes.
That’s the trouble with inconsistency; it’s not consistent.
No, I don’t think that is it. As I understand it the Hovind tribe had already agreed to purchase some of the properties so it doesn’t seem to make sense why Kent should want to serve the liens. Why try to stop what one wanted to happen? The only scenario I can think of is that the sale had been agreed but the Hovinids required more time to raise the necessary funds which the government were unwilling to permit. Perhaps Glen Stoll had absent-mindedly forgotten to leave a forwarding address. We will have to wait till the New Year to find out.
Perhaps for the first time in this ten year saga Kent will give evidence in his defence and make himself available for cross-examination, an ordeal that, so far, he has studiously avoided.
Another one of those German words (phrases?) that might be applicable verschlimmbessern – making something worse by trying to make it better.
Hovind lost it long ago. You remember when, before he was arrested, he was taken to court because he refused to get a $59 building permit? Yes, he refused to shell out $59.
(The county sheriff’s trenchant observation on the case was “Render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s, and this time, what Cesar wants is a building permit.”)
As someone who not only lives 5 km from German border, but also works in Germany, I feel compelled to say that Schadenfreude does exist in German. It has even its own wiki page http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
Charly #28:
Of course it does. But “Schandenfreude” does not. See #8, #9, #17.
Also bear in mind the other big part of what got Hovind in trouble was “structuring” cash withdrawls by pull a bit less than $10K at a time, since that’s the threshold at which there is mandatory reporting.
Do I think he’ll get 20 years? No. But he might easily get another 10.
@Olav 29.
Oops, my bad. I completely failed to see that one “n” in those words and I read everything as “Schadenfreude”.
The common problem of mind seeing what it expects to see.
Note that maximum sentences are extremely rare, so it’s a bit misleading to focus on them. Popehat has a whole rant about this, but not being a lawyer or having the appropriate chart in hand I don’t know how a lay person would really come up with more reasonable numbers.
Previous offenses are one whole axis of the chart, so Hovind is likely to be up there.
Popehat post with example chart: http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/26/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-shitty-journalism/
#14 Grumpyoldfart
“My prediction: A community service order maximum.
Yeah, um, no. Admittedly, anonymous posters on the Internet are a sub-optimal source of legal analysis. But mail fraud is federal. They really don’t do community service sentences. Federal sentencing guidelines are notoriously complicated, and of course he hasn’t been convicted of anything. But he’s accused of creating bogus instruments while incarcerated for creating bogus instruments. He’s never offered a formal defense. His position is that no one has ever articulated an accusation of wrongdoing, they’ve just imprisoned him for a decade for no particular reason. As an expression of remorse goes, that leaves much to be desired. This is a very serious matter.
So not only is he facing more jail time, he’s taking a crony with him?
Win – win.
‘Schandenfreude’ doesn’t exist (as far as I can see), but ‘Schandfreude’ could exist, being formed in the same manner as existing words such as ‘Schandmauer’ and ‘Schandvertrag’, and ‘Schandfreude’ would have the much the meaning suggested ie feeling pleasure which ought to be deprecated. In German, compound words can be formulated readily and almost freely. German authors often include such words which aren’t included in even very thick German dictionaries such as the Duden. And their meaning has to be derived from the meaning of their parts (and also the context).
At Hovinds sentencing, he could have been given 288 years of prison time. He was given ten years, and his property was forfeited to pay his outstanding tax bill. He didn’t pay his personal taxes, his business taxes, or withhold and pay any of his employees taxes. Ten years later, and Hovind and his shyster friend are still trying to fight the court ordered property seizure. I will take great pleasure in seeing him earn more prison time. I bet the original judge is kicking themselves for not just giving him 30 years in the first place, and being done with the lying hypocrite.
I though that was “softwareupgraden.”
Native speaker of German here. Olav is right. Freude = joy, Schaden = damage/harm, Schande = shame as in “dishonor”, not so much as in “being ashamed” (that’s Scham).
Ordinary people create such words all the time while speaking!
Conversely, it’s much easier to create adjectives in English than in German.
Courts take a dim view of open, continued, repeated, criminal contempt, with no remorse. As long as he wants to say he’s not subject to our laws, IMHO prison is exactly where he belongs. Or an asylum.
I prefer the word epicaricacy when conveying joy with the misfortune (or in this case comeuppance) of people I loathe.
Yeah, I’m thinking the court is going to come down on him like the wrath of Jehovah. I don’t see how they can do otherwise. He willfully tried to circumvent a court order and showed nothing but contempt for the court and the government. And, this isn’t something where he can just plead ignorance. They told him directly not to do what he did, before he did it. So, yeah, I think 20 years sounds about right.
Frankly, I am a strong proponent of prison reform and not incarcerating people that really don’t need to be incarcerated. But, people like Ham need to be in prison.
erichoug @42
While I doubt many people would disagree with you, this thread is about Kent Hovind, not Ken Ham.
Have they ever been seen together?
Azkyroth at #37 for the win!
I think their ego’s are so big, that they repulse each other within any close proximity. Say a hundred miles or so.
“I think their ego’s are so big, that they repulse each other within any close proximity. Say a hundred miles or so.”
If you try to push them together, they will not fuse. Instead the extra energy will result in a new Ham-Hovind couple plus an antineutrino.
I’d feel bad for him, I really would, but it gets more and more difficult when he keeps doing it to himself.
#birgerjohansson
They both have plenty of spin!
Two things to note here:
1) In addition to the 12 counts of failure to pay federal income and FICA taxes for his employees, Hovind was also found guilty of 45 counts of “structuring” (aka “smurfing”) where he would withdraw just under the $10K reporting limit. His wife Jo was found guilty of 44 counts. (She spent a year in prison.) Hovind never admitted fault in any of this and still maintains his innocence to this day. His followers believe he is being persecuted for his faith, not for failing to pay taxes and evade reporting laws.
2) With regard to the current mail fraud charges, I believe the reason the government is coming down so hard on Hovind is because Hovind is using the theories of a sovereign citizen named Paul John Hansen. The two are scheduled to be tried together on January 5, 2015. The government has a special interest in squashing the antics of sovereign citizens. Hovind and Hansen have been engaged in shenanigans to try and make the sale of the Dino Adventure Land properties as difficult as possible. Hovind knew he wasn’t supposed to do this, he was told specifically by a judge not to put a lis pendens on the property and he did it anyway. No sympathy here, none whatsoever.
>Paul John Hansen
I was reading his blog. What a fascinating man. It’s hard for me to tell if he’s serious (and batshit insane), or willingly defrauding people of their money by charging for false legal advice.