Ryder’s Last Ride
A couple days ago (hi, Judge Holmes) I lamented that my sources of blogfodder were drying up (see my blogpost “Drying Up My Sources,” 7/7/21). Today it’s getting worse, as Judge Mark V. Holmes unloads 191 (count ’em, 191) pages on one of my better sources of blogfodder, Ernest S. Ryder & Associates, APLC, et al, 2021 T. C. Memo. 88, filed 7/14/21*.
But I will say this for him, Judge Holmes waits until page 115 to unload his first diss on the partitive genitive, and there are only two more.
Ernie is an accountant and an attorney, a pioneer ERISA pundit, and a Rounder First Class with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. Ernie’s multiple roundy-rounds with Son-of-Boss, microcaptive insurers, and employee leasing, culminate in a ten-year audit, Graev missteps by IRS, but massive deficiency to Ernie and a fraud chop to boot.
For some backstory, see my blogposts “ESOPs Fables,” 8/20/18, “Ryder Rides Again,” 9/21/16, and “Chopfallen – Part Deux,” 8/28/18.
Ernie flogged multiple dodges, skimming off variously denominated fees into the multifarious entities he created. WY should name a road after him; he incorporated enough phony shell corps there to pay the WY Sec’y of State’s pension.
“All of these fees paid by the clients of the different tax products were compensation to R&A for its services in spinning webs of entities and squirting barrels of ink to hide the connection between itself and the fees it charged. We of course recognize that Ryder diverted these payments through contracts and entities, and the accounts and divisions within entities. We also recognize the invocation of Moline Properties that corporate forms must be respected. But the assignment-of-income doctrine does not immunize assignments of income to corporations or other entities. The income that R&A produced from sales of these deals to its clients was income to R&A because it was R&A itself that did the work.” 2021 T. C. Memo. 88, at p. 118.
There are charts (oh, are there charts!), and bank deposit analyses. One can but marvel at Ernie’s inventiveness, as he tries to bamboozle government subsidies for his ranching hobby, paper over attempts by IRS to put his dodger merchandise on the no-fly list, and obfuscate his way through eight million (count ’em, because I won’t) pages of trial testimony.
Truly a Holmesian extravaganza.
Taishoff Law 
Yet he managed to get all the cases sealed, so that we really don’t know all the details.
LikeLike
Indeed. Yet if there was a Rule 27 sealing order, I never saw it. And the docket had never before now, to my knowledge, been sealed. If Mr. Ryder moved for a sealing order on the trial, Judge Holmes never mentioned it in 191 pages; and if Judge Holmes ordered sealing sua sponte (a most extraordinary procedure), he never mentioned that either. I think this is the Genius Baristas (or 18F, whoever they are) deciding that if any part of a docket is sealed, it’s all sealed,notwithstanding the docket contains (as this one does) at least a couple dozen unsealed orders (hi, Judge Holmes). When I telephoned Public Affairs this afternoon to object, they had no idea what I was talking about.
LikeLike
Further to the foregoing, there was no Rule 103 protective order that I saw in the four years I’ve been following this case, and none applied for. And of course the Rule 345 anonymity rule only applies in whistleblower cases.
LikeLike