
Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes - vipivip
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/113483/william-h-millard-missing-ceo-reappers-after-20-years-wsj
======
nowarninglabel
Saipan is indeed one of the most corrupt backwards places on Earth. I know
because I've actually been there and got to know some of the locals and
politics of the place while there.

To say more eloquently what bugsy was trying to express, while it is unclear
if Mr. Millard did commit a crime, you must take into account that the people
chasing him for supposed tax abuse are some of the most corrupt people on
Earth. Much of that information is available on Wikipedia, but just read some
of the websites of ex-pats and such and you will get a good idea. Thus, I
would take _anything_ said by _anyone_ in the Saipanese government with a
large grain of salt. Furthermore, even if Mr. Millard is guilty, if the Saipan
government gets his money, it will be a negative outcome for everyone.

~~~
Steko
A negative outcome for all of us would be to have a 20+ year tax cheat end up
owing nothing. You can bet the plutocracy will be watching this case closely.

~~~
dhbanes
Excuse me, but why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion? The
fact that the WSJ claims him to be does not make it so. Here is some more
information about Millard, you can find it by restricting your google search
to items published before 9/1/11 -
[http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_t...](http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_tax-
law)

It seems there was more talk about the fact that Saipan was trying get his
money by changing their tax laws, not that he fled the US because he was
wanted for tax evasion as the WSJ article makes it sound.

edit: for clarity

~~~
Steko
"why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion?"

Why wouldn't I believe it?

As you yourself mention, the WSJ said so.

At least one jury decided he did.

Judges have reviewed the facts and issued a number of gag order backed
subpoenas.

50+ shell companies.

Disappears from view for 20 years.

etc.

Occam's razor, QED.

Cmon, you're going to bat for this guy with a 25 year old article that
predates the "alleged" evasion?

------
pg
Structurally this article reads like one that has been "placed" by a PR firm.
That combined with e.g.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption>

makes me feel like whatever the truth is, it's not exactly as described here.
I'm not saying the guy hasn't done anything wrong, just that I suspect we're
not getting the whole story.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed. The guy may be a crook, but something about that piece doesn't sit
well.

For instance, why are all these private law firms spending all this time and
money chasing this guy around? Certainly not out of some kind of goodwill on
their part. Do they get a cut of what's collected? Are they being paid by
somebody? I don't ask because I want to impeach their motives -- it's just a
critical part of any story. Any "chase" story has a chaser and a person
chased. We're missing key details.

I would also want to hear from the guy in question. What's his side of the
story? Even horrible wartime criminals end up on CNN telling us all their side
of the story, but this guy gets nothing.

Plus, it's obvious that as a reader I am supposed to have a reaction.
Something like "That cheap bastard! I hope they jack the jail up and put him
underneath" or some such. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the author trying
to push my buttons along those lines. I find being manipulated like that
uncomfortable.

Not a quality article in my book. But heck, that's not saying the guy didn't
do something wrong. From this article, I just don't know one way or another.
All I know is that he has money and that people are chasing him for it.

------
bugsy
I remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who
earned his success.

Saipan is one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth. As a US trust
territory, for many years they had slave plantations that produced clothing
for chinese companies which was labelled "Made in USA". Many workers were kept
under brutal conditions, raped, beaten and killed. The Saipanese are mostly
incredibly lazy and loved this system as it allowed them to have houses full
of slave servants and great wealth without ever having to work for it. It all
collapsed a few years ago, but there's a close to 100% chance that they are
the ones running the scam in this current case.

edit: Keep downvoting this, monkeys! I have no doubt I am one of a small
handful of people on HN that has intimate experience of how Saipan works and
how corrupt this place is. My post gives true insight to what is going on
there. Imagine the worst fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded
hillbilly sex fiend town straight out of the movie Deliverance, but then give
them dictatorial control over outsiders, a total lack of desire to work and a
strong desire to dominate control and cheat others and you have Saipan. It's
like a stereotypical town thought to exist in the backwoods of Arkansas, but
it's real, slavery is still legal, and it's part of the US. Absolutely
anything involving Saipanese officials that has a money angle for them is a
total scam. Since their slave factories collapsed, they have been in desperate
straits to steal what they can. I totally believe the CEOs explanation that
they backdated their tax code specifically to target him, and then never
served him of any real notice of it until now, after they've gotten a bunch of
judgements against him in which he had no chance to represent himself because
he didn't even know there was a case about this. That is exactly how they
work. They are incredibly conniving and will work every system to get what
they want. Typical small town american fundamentalist hillbillies, but in a
pacific island trust territory. These comments apply to the people in control
there. There's also the regular people who hate what has been done to their
island over the years, many are ostensibly good people. It's the corrupt
people in power that are the troublemakers, and dealing with them is exactly
exactly like Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist - which the Saipanese
basically are. The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar
sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that
belief system. And if you had no idea about the slavery and corruption and you
are downvoting this you are only proving how mentally you are exactly like
them. This post tells you the truth about Saipan, a place that until just now
you probably never heard of. Ignorant fools.

~~~
lucasjung
I wouldn't have downvoted you, but then your edit included some incredibly
bigoted and unwarranted stereotypes:

> _...fundamentalist christian [sic] ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex
> fiend town..._

> _Typical small town american [sic] fundamentalist hillbillies..._

> _Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist_

> _The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of
> madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief
> system._

This last one takes the cake. Even if I take it at your word that the
Saipanese are as lazy and corrupt as you make them out to be (which seems to
be the general consensus here and on Wikipedia, so I'll accept that for now),
you have absolutely zero proof that they became that way because of
"fundamentalist missionaries," rather than being that way to begin with. You
say that these negative attitudes come "with that belief system." What belief
system? It sounds like you're blaming the problems of Saipanese culture on
some chimerical theology that doesn't really exist.

If those missionaries were protestants (especially if they were Calvinists) in
the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries, they most likely did their best to instill
the indiginous people with a solid work ethic[1], exactly the opposite of the
vices you are trying to pin on "fundamentalism."

Here's my anecdotal evidence: In college, I briefly dated a Samoan girl who
was working on a graduate degree at a nearby university, with her research
subject being the colonial history of the South Pacific. Samoa was
proselytized by Calvinists in the 19th century, and she told me that when the
missionaries first arrived, the Samoans were pretty much the way you describe
Saipan today, and that the Calvinist influence helped bring about a more
egalitarian and less corrupt culture (with unscrupulous European traders often
at odds with the missionaries because they sought to profit from the native
corruption). Samoa isn't Saipan, but it is an example of "fundamentalist
missionaries" having exactly the opposite effect on a South Pacific culture
from what you blame them for in Saipan.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic>

~~~
lotharbot
Keep in mind that "Christian Fundamentalism" didn't even _exist_ until the end
of the 19th century. Trying to pin _anything_ that happened in the 17th or
18th century on "fundamentalism" is a mistake.

~~~
lucasjung
In the modern sense of the term, that is true. However, one could certainly
make an argument that Oliver Cromwell, et al were fundamentalists, as well as
the original settlers of Plymouth. You could go back even further in time and
apply the term to various Catholic orders at certain points in history.

All that being said, I was just using his term (in quotes) for the sake of
continuity of conversation, and it was not my intent to lend credence to his
application of the label "fundamentalist" to 18th- and 19th-century
missionaries.

------
Steko
I also remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who
earned his success... who then decided to use it to become a tax cheat for the
rest of his life.

Regardless of what you think about the Northern Marianas, this guy doesn't
deserve anyone's pity, he's been a tax cheat for well over 2 decades.

And no I don't "believe the CEO's story that he was never served", that's
horseshit. He left Saipan for a reason, to continue to dodge taxes any way he
could.

------
Hyena
Stories like this convince me that many of the most sophisticated cases of tax
evasion are actually the product of an OCD-like behavior.

------
nl
_A devotee of est, a faddish self-empowerment regimen of that era_

What is _est_? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful.

Edit: found it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training>

~~~
gruseom
Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example,
there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and
interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion,
60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the
early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New
Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was
controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people
found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from
it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60
Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it.

It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the
1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making
money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development
outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same
criticisms.

------
zandorg
Ah, a blast from the past. I was reading Once Upon a Time in Computerland by
Steven Levy. Not a bad book, but I wondered what happened to Millard. Now I
know!

