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Episode 22 CA mom, victim of literal "taxation is theft scheme", fights back
84 Plays2 years ago
Christi Grab was just your average American mom, wife, and caregiver to sick parents when her world was turned upside down by the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB).
After being erroneously told the FTB had “lost” several of their quarterly tax payments to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, Christi spent over 10 years fighting the FTB to rectify their account and be refunded the monies they had overpaid in the process of trying to sort it out.
During the ordeal, after having to learn to navigate the whole labyrinthine bureaucracy of the CA tax system, Christi uncovered numerous fraud, racketeering, and extortion schemes that the CA FTB is engaged in. She ultimately took her case to the Superior Court of California where she acted as her own lawyer to litigate her case.
Did she prevail? You’ll have to watch the episode to hear how all this played out! While her particular case has been resolved, Christi has spent the last 5 years continuing to hold the FTB to account and helping others do the same.
This is the wild true story of a literal “taxation is theft” scheme that will make any libertarian’s blood boil.
*****
Promos:
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Show notes page: https://libertyalliancenetwork.com/episode-22-ca-mom-victim-of-literal-taxation-is-theft-scheme-fights-back/
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Transcript
The Impact of Corporate Wokeness
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Have you noticed that the world has gone insane? For example, tell me if these headlines ring a bell for you. Bud Light makes a special commemorative can for trans girl Dylan Mulvaney. Dove hires a Black Lives Matter activist and 400 pound body positivity model to promote their products. Target sells chest binders and tuck friendly undergarments for kids. Are you sick of living in clown world yet?
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Are you tired of spending your money with woke companies that hate your values? As good libertarians and
A Conservative Shopping Solution
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free market capitalists, we all believe in the power of voting with your dollar. But where do you go when it seems like no matter where you turn, you're surrounded by woke companies or brands? What if I told you I found the solution?
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Speaker
Let's help
Kristi Grab vs. Franchise Tax Board
00:01:56
Speaker
make GoWoke, GoBroke a reality.
00:02:20
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another episode of Liberty Alliance Networks. What can we do? I'm Haley Heathman, and today I am pleased to be joined by Kristi Grab. Kristi is a native Californian who resides in San Diego. She's just an everyday, tax-paying American, or so she thought, until she found herself embroiled in a literal
00:02:42
Speaker
Taxation is theft, embezzlement, and racketeering scheme, courtesy of California's Franchise Tax Board. She's spent the last 15 years fighting back and exposing their schemes, and we're gonna hear all about it today. So, Christy, welcome to the show.
00:02:57
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. Yeah. So, um, yeah, you sent me a bunch of material, uh, in advance of this interview because like, well, this is a lot. And I, I think I was a little bit surprised too about how far back this goes. So, um, I didn't realize so, so we'll, we'll get to your story, but tell me, like, just tell me, let's go back to even before that describe your life before all this happened. So who was Christie before all this happened?
Kristi's Early Life and Health Struggles
00:03:26
Speaker
So I worked in the mortgage industry in my early 20s. And then I got married and then my husband and I shortly after we got married decided that we wanted to buy a boat and sail around the world. So in 2007, my husband and I left our jobs and we sailed around the world.
00:03:51
Speaker
on our boat. And then when we got back, the mortgage industry had collapsed and I didn't really have a job to go back to. And at that point in time, we were trying for a baby. So we decided it probably wasn't a good idea to have me start over at the bottom rung in a new career, because infant costs would be more than I would be bringing in. So I became a stay at home mom after that.
00:04:18
Speaker
and that actually worked out really well because all three of our parents got sick and so I wound up being a full-time caregiver for our elderly parents along with our baby and then meanwhile I got sick and so literally I spent all my time schlepping from doctor to doctor as I was trying to work on my own health and my parents and
00:04:46
Speaker
You know all with a baby, you know with a little one right? Yeah, and then um
00:04:53
Speaker
Obviously, well, and you had no idea what was to come either. And so maybe also because you were a stay-at-home mom and obviously that's a full-time job and as well as caregiving, that's a full-time job. But still, with that said, there's still some flexibility with that because I think since then you didn't realize the saga that you were going to get embroiled in.
00:05:16
Speaker
with
Lost Payments and Legal Struggles
00:05:17
Speaker
this california franchise tax board so why don't you start me off and tell me how this all began like like you were just one day you're just christy live in life with you know being a stay-at-home mom and then the next day holy crap what just happened like and how did i get what's going on here
00:05:37
Speaker
So my husband's company went public. And so we were selling stock each quarter. And so every quarter I sent in an estimated quarterly tax payment for however much stock we'd sold. And the Franchise Tax Board kept losing our payments. Between 2008 and 2016, they lost 14 of the payments that we sent in.
00:06:07
Speaker
So clearly, there's a serious problem with the bookkeeping. And some of the payments were relatively easy to find. Even the easy to find ones took two phone calls and a fax.
00:06:22
Speaker
Even after they found the payment, it would take them six weeks to apply it to our account. But other of the payments just couldn't be located. It was very common to take more than six months to locate a payment. One of the payments was broken up into
00:06:43
Speaker
and moved to three different tax years in three different places. And it took them seven years to find one of the portions of the payment. And that took intervention from the state controllers office to make the franchise tax board find that money. And the reason why they couldn't find it was because there was accounting fraud on the file and all the dates had been altered. And it looked like the money had been refunded to us when it hadn't been.
00:07:13
Speaker
So that's why that one was so difficult to find. So as a result of all this, I mean, obviously there's very serious accounting irregularities going on. Um, but I'm pretty sure that there's some kind of off the book spending account as well. And that I am working on substantiating still. That's not something that's already been substantiated.
Mail Issues and Tax Confusion
00:07:36
Speaker
That was kind of a side
00:07:37
Speaker
tangent there. But anyway, so in 2010, we moved to Los Angeles so that my husband could take a job that had a, it was a big promotion and a big wage increase for him. So we moved up there and my husband hated the job and I hated living in Los Angeles.
00:08:03
Speaker
And his company here in San Diego offered him his job back at the same amount of money that he was making in LA. So we packed up and moved within a couple of days. We were out so fast it wasn't even funny. But that was at the end of 2010. And the post office never forwarded our mail to us. And it called multiple times and complained. But pretty much all of our mail was lost.
00:08:31
Speaker
pretty early on from the beginning of the move. And some of the lost mail included tax documents. So I didn't realize that our tax documents were missing until early April when I went to go work on the tax returns.
00:08:45
Speaker
And so I requested new W-2s from his employer. Well, the W-2s came showing that he made a lot more money than he actually did. So I didn't file the tax returns right away. So the franchise tax board sent me a notice saying, you owe us all this money in, uh,
00:09:04
Speaker
in taxes. And it listed the amount of money that was collected by my husband's employers, but it didn't have the amount of money that I'd sent in an estimated tax payment. So there was five estimated tax payments missing.
00:09:21
Speaker
And so it turned into a giant fight at that point where three of those payments were the payments that I was talking about that couldn't be found for years.
Legislative Involvement and Systemic Problems
00:09:33
Speaker
And so I kept going round and round and round with them to try to find these lost payments. And I didn't file my taxes because I wanted the lost money to be found before I filed the taxes. They're saying we owed all this money.
00:09:49
Speaker
So anyway, this dragged on for years and eventually I got my legislators involved. And as soon as the legislators got involved, they magically found the money like that, almost all the money, not that $1,000 portion of that one payment that didn't get found right away. But they told me that none of the money was ever lost. It was required by law to not apply the money to your account until you filed your tax return. And I said,
00:10:17
Speaker
Which law is that? And they said, well, I don't know, but it is a law. We're not allowed to apply the money to your account until you actually file. And I was like, yeah, if you don't have a law for me, that's not a law. I mean, a statute number, that's not a law. So anyway, I realized I got caught in an investment in racketeering scheme and I've been trying to put a stop to it ever since. Right. And so like, you're not talking, um,
00:10:42
Speaker
This isn't jump change. You're talking like tens of thousands of dollars here that they just, you're not talking like paltry little $500, you know, like missing money. For example.
00:10:54
Speaker
Two of the payments that couldn't be located were totaled $13,500. They filed a wage garnishment against my husband for $6,000 instead of finding the $13,500 that was lost. So they made us send them more money for this wage garnishment that never should have been imposed in the first place.
00:11:18
Speaker
And there was no due process at all. They just tell you that they think the money is due, and there's no recourse. I never got to go before a judge and say, hey, look at all this money that I've sent them that they've lost. So all in all, we're talking, I had paid tens of thousands of dollars more than they kept claiming we owed.
00:11:46
Speaker
There were a few points in time where I just wanted them to leave me alone, so I sent them the money that they claimed was due just to get them off my back. I had a lot going on. I had three sick parents. I was sick. I couldn't take the stress. So I sent them money multiple times to get them to go away, and they lost those payments. It didn't matter if I sent them the money because they lost it anyway.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's unbelievable. That's totally, totally unbelievable. Like, so when you're dealing with this experience and you're trying to like talk through this and get in and figure this out, like,
00:12:29
Speaker
Who are you talking to? Are you able to, is there like a case file or anything like that? Or is it like every time you, you make a contact, like it's starting from zero, you have to explain the whole situation all over again. And Debbie doesn't know what Jamal is doing and Jamal doesn't know what, you know, Suzette is doing. And so there's never any, like, you have to just kind of re-explain the whole thing. And you know, one person says one thing and the next person says another, like, how was that?
00:12:56
Speaker
So that's
Customer Service Failures at the Tax Board
00:12:57
Speaker
how it was in the beginning. So I have been accusing the Franchise Hacks Board for years of deliberately making it impossible to clear up mistakes.
00:13:07
Speaker
Um, and they actually admitted to it in March of 2023 at their board meeting, they actually admitted that penalties are being falsely imposed as a result of customer service failures. So one of the things that they do is they put, um, they send you a notice that says you have to, there's a problem on your account and in order to clear it up, you need to call.
00:13:32
Speaker
this phone number and it's the main customer service line. So you call in, you hold for an hour, the system hangs up on you, you call back, you hold for an hour, you get through to a customer service rep and they tell you, oh, actually you need to call the collections department and the collections department number is this. So then you have to hang up and call again, but they mark the file as you were transferred. So even though you call, you hung up and call a different number and hold held for another hour again,
00:14:01
Speaker
They say, oh, you were transferred to collections. So it's deceptive language that they give the regulators. So the regulators aren't aware of how bad the customer service really is. But anyway, so when you call the main customer service line, it's a new person every time. But when you call the
00:14:22
Speaker
the follow-up number, like the collections department, you get assigned to a collections person. And so you do deal with the same person multiple times in that department. But it's always the same thing with them. All right, you need to send in this fact. So another facet of their racketeering scheme is that
00:14:45
Speaker
They don't process correspondence before the deadline expires. So when you get a notice in the mail, you have, it depends on what the notice is, but somewhere between 14 and 60 days to respond to the notice. And so you have to call in, find out what the problem is and how to fix it. And then you have to get your documentation together and send it to them.
00:15:12
Speaker
The problem with that is that their turn time, so I'll read you their most current turn times that they disclosed in March 2023. So in March 2023, they disclose that 54% of live chats go unanswered. So less than 50% of live chats are responded to.
00:15:38
Speaker
Only 40% of phone calls are answered, so 60% of the time they hang up on people like I got hung up on.
00:15:45
Speaker
It takes them four to five months to process correspondence that's sent via the postal mail. So if you've got a 60-day deadline and they don't respond to, they don't process your correspondence for five months, they claim that you never responded, but you did. They just didn't get it in time. And then on their website, it's called MyFTB. And so if you upload documents to their website,
00:16:13
Speaker
It's processed within 30 days. But if you got a notice in the mail that said you have 30 days to respond from the date that we mailed, and then you have to call in and talk to the rep, and then you can respond with the appropriate documents,
00:16:29
Speaker
you would have to literally respond the same day that they put the notice in the mail for them to process it before the deadline expired. The
Fraudulent Practices Targeting Low-Income Taxpayers
00:16:37
Speaker
other thing they didn't talk about in the March meeting is that they have a one-week turn time on faxes. So the only way you might be able to get your documents processed before the deadline is via fax. But almost invariably, they lose the faxes when you send them. And it's difficult to get through. So you'll have to go and
00:16:58
Speaker
spend an hour getting a busy signal and then the fax transmits and then you wait a week to call to follow up and they say, Oh no, we never got it. You got to send it again. And that's something that struck me when I was watching all the videos. And by the way, of course, this is going to be on my show notes page, libertyalliancenetwork.com slash what can we do?
00:17:17
Speaker
You'll find all the show notes and Christy's blog and YouTube channel where she's done multiple videos about this whole scheme and really goes in depth about everything that's going on because we can't cover it all. I mean, this has been 15 years in the making.
00:17:33
Speaker
But we'll just touch on the highlights but i remember in one of those videos you talking about it because it started in two thousand eight. You know they didn't even have a website initially i think you it was either you had to do things by snail mail or by fax and the amount of hours you're saying that it took.
00:17:51
Speaker
to just waste, just waste trying to get these faxes sent off. And it was one of the things that, you know, one of your, your arguments about how well, of course, this affects those people of low socioeconomic status the most because they don't have access to these resources. You were lucky you had a friend at the time who still had a fax in her home. And so you would go hang out with her in her home. But most people, I mean, we don't I mean, even back then we
00:18:21
Speaker
I didn't think I knew anybody who had a fax machine in their home. And so it's just another kind of way to prey on the weak and the disadvantaged in a way.
00:18:30
Speaker
Absolutely. I 100% believe that they are targeting the low socioeconomic demographic. And they are really kind of creepy in how they stock low socioeconomic people. They're constantly trying to get people who aren't required to file tax returns to file. They're offering
00:18:54
Speaker
carrots and incentives to try to get people to file tax returns even though they aren't required to because they don't make enough money. It's clear that it's an obsession with them to get low socioeconomic people to file. And then there's a woman named Susan Maples who's kind of pivotal to my court case and stuff. She was a taxpayer advocate during
00:19:19
Speaker
all the problems that I had with FTB. But she transferred jobs. And now her job is literally to stock people of low socioeconomic status. And she made this presentation a couple of years ago at one of the board meetings that was super creepy about how extensively they stock the poor. They go to different charities and organizations and agencies that aid people to get data on who's getting aid and then hunt them down.
00:19:49
Speaker
try to get them to file tax returns. It's just really weird. Right. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here too, but you kind of alluded to it before because one of my questions was like,
00:20:02
Speaker
Like, have you been, like, how is this structured? Like, have you been able to file the money, follow the money, like, Quibono? Like, have you been able to trace the origins of this scheme? Like, is it, like, like, what is going on here? Is this just gross incompetence or is this like? It's, it's, it's deliberate. Um, so last year, so,
00:20:27
Speaker
Every year there's something called the annual taxpayer bill of rights meeting where we have the public has the opportunity to ask questions of franchise tax board regarding policies and procedures and make requests to changes to policies and procedures.
00:20:43
Speaker
And last year I asked them to disclose what they do with the money once they get it, like estimated tax payments. And they claim that all estimated tax payments are turned over to the state controller's office immediately upon receipt.
00:20:58
Speaker
But the money, when it's embezzled, goes into an account called no payment. That was documented in my court case. They identified them as literally no payments. And so I think the franchise tax board probably uses that word so that they don't have to send the money to the state controller's office and that they don't actually turn it over to the state controller until it's identified as an actual estimated tax payment.
00:21:27
Speaker
So as long as it's a no payment and not applied to anybody's account, it's money that's free to be utilized in other ways. Anyway, I'm certain it's an off-the-book spending account. And I'm not sure whether the state controller controls it or FTB controls it, but it's called no payment for a reason. It's their slush fund.
00:21:52
Speaker
I'm sure. That's not 100% documented. I'm still working on documenting it, but that's what all the prima facie evidence indicates. Right. Well, then how do they get just the grunts to go along with this?
00:22:07
Speaker
Is there like a playbook? Well, I mean, I know you've, you've, you've outlined kind of the steps of some of like the, the, like the four plays of how they, the scheme works, but like, as far as maybe the, and I want you to walk me through that, but then also too, on the other end of that is like, it's not like they have that manual in front of them. So like,
Systemic Issues and Management Failures
00:22:25
Speaker
how are they, how are they getting the grunts to kind of do their dirty work for them? Or is it, or is it, or is it kind of like, yes, you need to hang up on every four, you know, every four out of every 10 calls or something? Like, is that in their manual or something?
00:22:37
Speaker
So the grant workers have no idea what's going on. So it is a scheme that's coordinated by upper management. And so upper management makes sure that each department makes mistakes. And each of these mistakes comes together to create the racketeering scheme. So each department knows that their department's kind of messed up.
00:23:03
Speaker
but they don't understand how kind of messed up fits into the bigger picture to create an actual scheme. So most of the grunt worker, I mean, some of the grunt workers are jerks, but really I would say the majority of them are actually nice people who are just doing their job and they're told it's legal. And so they have no reason to not believe that it's legal. And so they just do what they're told to do. Um,
00:23:29
Speaker
And FTB in that March 2023 board meeting said that they have a huge problem with turnover of new hires, that most new hires leave FTB before they've recouped the cost to train them for the job. So I think most people come into the job and realize, oh, this is a really jacked up place. I'm out of here.
00:23:57
Speaker
They didn't disclose the percentage of people that stay, but again, they did disclose that most people leave before the cost of the training has even been recouped. The majority of people are leaving relatively quickly.
00:24:15
Speaker
But the state of California, there's a lot of job stability and there's big fat pensions. So I think as people are there for a while, they start to eventually figure out, oh God, this is not lawful. And I think those people just put the blinders on and just
00:24:34
Speaker
live in denial because they need a good job. They need a roof over their head. They need to support themselves. They've worked there too many years. Now they're entitled to a pension. They're not going to give up their big fat pension. And so I think they put the blinders on and kind of superglue them to their head so that they just don't see what's going on around them. Right, or try and claim plausible deniability of some sort.
00:25:03
Speaker
And, you know, I guess I kind of answering my own question about like these grunt workers. And if you think of just any, I'm sure, you know, it's probably not much different with government workers versus your typical corporate, you know, customer service, and they all have like a script that they work from. And so it's kind of like an if then kind of like, if they complain about this, then this is your answer. And so like, they're just probably reading from the script, like, and when they encounter somebody like you, where they're saying, well, no, our tax law says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:25:31
Speaker
Well, they don't know what the law is. That's just the script that they're told to read. Whereas you, actually, now that you've been embroiled in this, you've almost become somewhat of a tax expert yourself, and you can probably recite the law better than they can, and then they probably don't even know what to say to you at that point. Exactly. Yeah. And they're just like, well, I don't know.
00:25:55
Speaker
It is what it is. And so actually they tried to ignore me and stop responding to me when I got to the point where the grant workers couldn't answer. But then I got my legislators involved and the legislators required that the executives respond to me. And that's when the executives got involved and I started.
00:26:12
Speaker
being able to kind of pick apart the schemes, you know, and able to get information about how things work. Like there is a disclosure department that gives a lot of information if you ask for it in the right way, but you have to know what you're asking for and how to ask for it. And so like, you know, I did eventually find out about the existence of the disclosure department, but that was like pulling teeth to find out that information.
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Speaker
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Speaker
That's right. One more added benefit of the shop club is getting a discount on America's best beef, and I mean it when I say that. What makes it America's best beef? Well, it's the only operation in America that is fully vertically integrated, meaning they control everything, the whole operation from feed to finish.
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Speaker
All of their beef is either USDA prime or high choice, which is something most other beef boxes can't boast about. But what I like best of all is the price. Look, I want to support local farmers and ranches as much as anyone. But when I looked into some of them, well, let's just say it was cost prohibitive, especially when you add in shipping costs.
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Speaker
Here, the shipping is included and the beef boxes are deeply discounted when you're a member of the shop club. So their bundles are way more affordable than anything else on the market, especially for the quality you're getting. Something you might not know about me, but I was a yacht stewardess for 10 years. Trust me when I say I know good food and I haven't had better beef than this outside of the top steakhouses in the country.
00:28:30
Speaker
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00:28:54
Speaker
Well, and this goes back to I think like you mentioned a playbook and in one of your blog posts, it's kind of a playbook for that they use, but also that some of these other government agencies, they all seem to play from and one of them is like they kind of cover for each other.
00:29:10
Speaker
So, you know, they're all kind of covering for each other and they, they, they, and of course the game is rigged. So that's part of it too. The game is rigged. You know, at one point I think you, well, one thing that they do and you can, you know, fill in the details I think is that,
00:29:26
Speaker
They appoint you some sort of a tax attorney, but it's like basically a student and they're associated with the franchise tax boards. So it's like the fox guarding the hen house, so to speak. And not only that, of course, even if they weren't owned or compromised by that position, they just are incompetent because they're basically students. So it's almost like a joke of like, yeah, here you go. We'll give you some free representation.
00:29:51
Speaker
One of the things that I didn't mention to you, but it's probably worth mentioning now, is that system changed when Governor Brown was in office. So it used to be that
00:30:06
Speaker
If you wanted to appeal a penalty that had been imposed, you would file an appeal with the Board of Equalization and their elected representatives. And so you didn't need an attorney. You could have one if you wanted one, but you didn't need it. You just went and made a case to these elected officials about why your penalty shouldn't have been imposed.
00:30:32
Speaker
And there was actually really good success in getting penalties refunded because the board of equalization are elected people and they want to be reelected and they want to be popular with the people so they would side with the people on things that were blatantly unfair. So Governor Brown changed that and he took that
00:30:57
Speaker
Um appeal duty away from the board of equalization and he created a new agency called the office of tax appeals So the office of tax appeals is an administrative court and you do need an attorney I mean you can represent yourself but because it's not informal like the board of equalization was you really do need an attorney um, and so
00:31:19
Speaker
they offset that need for an attorney with this free lawyer program. But
Challenges of Tax Appeals
00:31:26
Speaker
yeah, the free lawyer is a student, and the student is under the purview of the Franchise Tax Board, and the student's supervisor is an employee of the Franchise Tax Board. So literally, their job is to make sure you lose, and even if you do get
00:31:43
Speaker
your own representation. Statistically speaking, almost everybody loses at the Office of Tax Appeals because the Office of Tax Appeals job is to rubber stamp all the unlawful stuff that FTB is doing.
00:31:57
Speaker
Well, and I was taken aback when I was reading the blog post that you wrote kind of about this where even if you do get a private attorney, well, number one, you're only trying to recoup, I mean, in your case, like $15,000 and they're giving you like an estimate of like a wild estimate of like,
00:32:18
Speaker
$100,000, $300,000, or $800,000. Let's just clarify something. So the Office of Tax Appeals, what did they quote me? I think somewhere between $5,000 and $15,000, depending on how complicated the case was. But it seemed ridiculous to pay $15,000 to get a $15,000 refund, maybe
00:32:45
Speaker
When statistically speaking, I had like a 90% something chance of losing, so that was kind of a waste of money. But for the Superior Court case, yeah, so if you lose with the Office of Tax Appeals, you have the right to appeal to Superior Court.
00:33:01
Speaker
So when I started looking for an attorney for Superior Court, I talked to three attorneys and one quoted me $100,000 and one quoted me $300,000 and one quoted me $800,000. And I think the $800,000 guy was the right number. I think all of them would have been $800,000 when all was said and done because the Franchise Tax Board plays dirty and they deliberately do things to run up costs. And so because of their dirty tactics to
00:33:32
Speaker
create extra motions and things and run up charges. Yeah, it is very expensive. So yeah, I'm going to pay $800,000 to get my $15,000 back.
Self-representation and Legal Discoveries
00:33:45
Speaker
But I just felt strongly that I wasn't going to let this go. So I decided, you know what? I would rather try and fail than not try at all. So I decided to sue them. Myself, acting is my own attorney.
00:33:55
Speaker
And going back to the office of tax appeals case, I did get the free attorney to start with. Um, but the free attorney refused to address the accounting fraud. He wanted me to make a case that the reason why we filed late was because I had health problems. And I was like, no, that's not the reason at all. I filed late because they lost my money and they kept making me jump through these hoops to find it. And like, I couldn't file my tax returns because I've spent all my time jumping through hoops trying to find this lost money.
00:34:26
Speaker
But the attorney wouldn't address that, wouldn't talk about it whatsoever. So when I got pushy and said, hey, this is a conflict of interest that you won't address these accounting fraud issues, he fired me. So then I wound up representing myself through the rest of the Office of Tax Appeal case. So because it went OK in the Office of the Tax Appeals, I was feeling kind of emboldened and like, you know what? I did it once. I can do it again. I'll do this in superior court. No problem.
00:34:57
Speaker
And so how did that go? I mean, did you continue to represent yourself? Did it go up to that level or did you? Yeah, I did represent myself. The case went for two years and I think I did a pretty darn good job when all is said and done given the fact that I have no real legal training. I put a lot of effort into learning
00:35:20
Speaker
What I was doing and and you know, and I didn't have a lot of the tools that are available to lawyers But you know
00:35:31
Speaker
there's a lot of bad attorneys out there. And I think, you know, obviously I didn't do as good of a job as a good attorney would have done, but I think I did a better job than a bad attorney would have done. Um, and because I was doing my own legal work, it made me really scrutinize the documents a lot more carefully than I would have otherwise. And I think that if I had paid the money to an attorney, a lot of stuff that I found in the fraud and the perjury, um,
00:36:00
Speaker
Would have been missed cuz i would have assumed that the attorney was scrutinizing would have noticed the perjury and the improperly redacted documents but now i realize you know what they're busy they're not really scrutinizing stuff they're like looking for keywords and stuff so i think because i was going through things carefully line by line.
00:36:22
Speaker
I was able to point out a lot of evidence that they had submitted. I had been able to find improprieties and a lot of the evidence that they had submitted that an attorney would have missed. So I think, you know, even though I didn't win my case, it was rigged. There was no way I was going to win my case.
00:36:41
Speaker
It actually was really a very good thing that i did it because the franchise tax board never denied the allegations of accounting fraud.
00:36:53
Speaker
When I first made the allegations, they just ignored me, ignored me, ignored me. But at the very end, they did have to acknowledge them. And they just said that the fraud was irrelevant to the case, and it didn't matter if they committed fraud or not. So now, because they never denied the accounting fraud, it is
00:37:13
Speaker
In California, failure to deny constitutes admission of truth. So they essentially tacitly admitted that they did execute accounting fraud on my account in many different ways. And now anybody can download my court documents and use them as evidence in their own court case.
00:37:34
Speaker
So I feel like I've done something really good for society at large in that there's documents available to support people's cases. But the other thing that I did was I found where to look for this stuff so that if other people pursue cases, even with a lawyer, at least they know where to look, where they hide the stuff.
00:37:59
Speaker
Right. That's super cool. I mean, like you said, it's a silver lining. Yes, you would have preferred to win your case, but that is really cool. But I think a fairly common legal mantra is I thought it fraud vitiates everything. Yes. But it doesn't seem to have done so in this case. They seem to have thrown that out the window, I guess. I don't know.
00:38:25
Speaker
The judge never acknowledged the accounting fraud ever. Actually, so Franchise Tax Board, I filed the case
00:38:33
Speaker
saying that our fees were improperly imposed as a result of FTB's own accounting irregularities. And they claim, FTB claimed the case was about something else altogether. They never acknowledged the case was about accounting irregularities. And the judge went with their version of the case. So my case was never heard by the judge. Like the judge never heard my case as I presented it. Like it was a total straw man?
00:39:05
Speaker
One of the things that I did was I started watching trials in my judge's courtroom so that I knew what I was supposed to do when it was my turn to be there and also to get a better understanding of law and how the legal system worked. And so that's actually a pretty common tactic. I saw it a lot happen where one side would present one argument and the other side would present a different argument and I would swear to God they were not talking about the same thing at all.
00:39:21
Speaker
It was really surreal.
00:39:33
Speaker
It was really weird. We like to think of judges as being these impartial arbiters of law, but clearly they're not. I know you can't probably prove anything, but can you speculate about are they somehow in on it? Are they getting on the take somehow? Is there some of the you scratch my bracket, I scratch yours going on? What do you think?
00:40:02
Speaker
So I watched my judge a lot over the two years that the case was pending. And I think he's a really good guy, and he does try his best. But there were several cases where he basically said, I'm a yes man, and I want to rule this way, but I will get in trouble. So I'm going to rule this way, and you have my empathy.
00:40:31
Speaker
At the end of my court case, he warned me, he threatened me and told me to stop making allegations of government corruption and that bad things would happen if I continue to make these allegations of government corruption.
00:40:49
Speaker
I don't think he threatened me because he was a bad guy. I think he threatened me because he was genuinely concerned about my well-being and warning me. He actually said, Mrs. Grab, you're a nice person and you have a nice family because my family always came to court with us. And so I think he was trying to tell me, hey, you're putting your family in danger by making these allegations of corruption.
00:41:17
Speaker
I think basically he works for the state of California and he knows if he goes against his employer, he's going to get fired or in trouble or there's going to be retribution if he goes against his employer. He didn't have any choice in the matter if he wanted to keep his job or
00:41:38
Speaker
not be retaliated again somehow. He was close to retirement age. Obviously, you need to protect the state of California's revenue source if you're going to retire. He needed to make sure his retirement money was there. He didn't rule in a way that would affect their ability to collect
00:41:59
Speaker
Revenue or like reduce the amount of revenue that they collected so yeah, he was a yes, man And I think they have to be yes men in order to to keep their jobs and I noticed on your blog too that You actually have a disclaimer saying I'm not suicidal. I don't drink. I don't take any drugs like I mean Yeah, we could get a ha ha out of that but like have you to your knowledge experienced any sort of retaliation or
00:42:29
Speaker
Is that just like a precautionary thing? The Department of Justice did post my and my husband's social security numbers on the internet. And they have retaliated against us. So I mean, that was clear retaliation when they posted me and my husband's social security numbers. And it sent a clear message. The message was, we did this. So I had
00:42:55
Speaker
sent the evidence that the Franchise Tax Board submitted in the case. I took it, I highlighted the accounting fraud, and I refiled it with the courts with all the highlights and an explanation of how the fraud worked. But I also sent it to the California Auditor's Office and the FBI and the Department of Revenue, Federal Department of Revenue.
00:43:18
Speaker
I filed a federal criminal complaint against two of the FTB staff who told me to send more money than the bill said was due. Then they falsified their internal records to make it look like that was always the amount of money due. The Department of Justice was the attorney for FTB in the Superior Court case.
00:43:42
Speaker
So the Department of Justice responded by filing a motion for sanction, saying that I should have to pay $8,000 as punishment for turning them into authorities, and that she wanted the judge to order me to stop collecting evidence of accounting fraud.
00:44:03
Speaker
In that motion for sanctions, she posted me and my husband's social security numbers. But she didn't have them. She got them from FTB. And FTB is known for doing this. They've actually had to pay sanctions and penalties in other cases for exposing social security numbers as well. So this is a known harassment tool of the Franchise Tax Board. And the DOJ and the Franchise Tax Board conspired together to use it on me.
00:44:31
Speaker
But the thing is, is like they said it was an accident or inadvertent was the word that the actual word was inadvertent. But, um, FTB inadvertently gave her our social security numbers and then she was required by law to notify, to send me the motion for sanctions 21 days prior to filing it with the court so that I could rectify it
00:45:00
Speaker
without it having to go through the court system. But she didn't. She sent it to me after she filed it. So if she had followed the law and sent it to me prior, I would have caught the social security numbers and how to redact them or omit them before she submitted it to the court. But she submitted to the court first. So she broke protocol. So there's no way it was an accident. Too many people made too many mistakes. Yeah, it was definitely not an accident.
00:45:28
Speaker
So where do things stand now? Get me to the end. Were you made whole? How did this all end up? Or is it still ongoing? What's going on now?
Health Impact of Legal Battles
00:45:40
Speaker
Well, my case is done and over with. So at this point, I'm not fighting for me to get money back. I'm fighting to get them to stop exploiting taxpayers. I want them to comply with the law.
00:45:59
Speaker
Something that I've learned through this whole process of acting as my own lawyer is that income taxes are illegal. Now, if you had told me that before I started down this legal road, I would have thought you were crazy. I thought the people that said taxes were illegal were
00:46:16
Speaker
crazy. And I mean, my problems are because I overpaid taxes and they lost the money, right? So I don't have an issue with paying taxes or I didn't have an issue with paying taxes. My issue was that they're cheating at their own rules. They have set up this system and they're cheating at their own system.
00:46:36
Speaker
And so now I'm trying to prove that they're cheating at their own system and get them to stop cheating at their system and to comply with their own rules. But by discrediting them, I'm opening the door for the anti-tax people to say, not only do they cheat at their own rules, the rules were never lawful to start with.
00:46:58
Speaker
So my thing isn't anti-tax. I just want them to comply with their own rules, but I'm kind of hoping to help this other movement as well. So then, but like in your case, you know, you, you took it to the superior court and you said you lost. So what does that mean for you? Were you like, did you, you lost that case? Did you, was that it like, or were you ever made whole?
00:47:25
Speaker
I can, no, I mean, I can sue them for fraud because the, so like my case was a refund of penalties. So that's over and done with. I didn't get my refund. That's done. But I still can sue them for damages as a result of the fraud. I can actually document that. So when I was really sick with my rare kidney disease,
00:47:53
Speaker
I had blood work done every month, and I can actually document that the months that they harassed me, my health deteriorated, and the months that they left me alone, my health improved. And I was my very sickest in July of 2016, sorry, 2014.
00:48:13
Speaker
when they filed that second wage garnishment against my husband. And then after that, my health started to very slowly improve because at least there was no more wage garnishments being threatened. And then when my legislators got involved and they found the money, my health took a miraculous turn for the better.
00:48:35
Speaker
Um, and then, and I've been like stable ever since the problems ended with a franchise tax board, I've been stable. So I can document that they unlawfully harassed me as a result of their own accounting fraud. Um, and I'm entitled to damages for that unlawful harassment. Um, and that's something I might pursue because there's no statute of limitation on fraud. So I might actually take that case. Um,
00:49:03
Speaker
But this isn't really about me so much. So I'm actually more interested in doing a federal class action complaint using common law to try to put a stop to these unlawful schemes. So there is still recourse available for me, but I'm kind of looking at the bigger picture for everyone and not just me.
00:49:30
Speaker
In some ways, this seems like a David and Goliath situation, and I think you might have to be a little crazy to carry on this monumental Herculean task.
00:49:45
Speaker
Of course, I applaud you for it. When they get into, we protect our own, and this is their own racketeering scheme and everything, if you think about it, how do they take down Al Capone? Well, with taxes, right? I think that was Al Capone.
00:50:02
Speaker
Erwin Schiff, Peter Schiff's dad. Even though he was totally on the right about all the income tax and everything, he still died in prison because he went to bat to try and fight against these illegal taxes and tax provisions. Do you think about that? Does that weigh on you? Does that scare you away from thinking, you know what, I've got a family, maybe I shouldn't do this? I do believe that this is a calling from God. I really do.
00:50:33
Speaker
A lot of people have warned me that I should stop, including the judge, and back off. But I feel like when I fulfilled my calling, I'll know I fulfilled my calling and I'll feel like I'm free to move on to something else. It's hopefully something
Government Legitimacy and Accountability
00:50:54
Speaker
more enjoyable next time around. But every step of the way that
00:51:02
Speaker
I'm a stay-at-home mom. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a CPA. I didn't know what was going on. But God has provided
00:51:12
Speaker
direction as to what road to take and then giving me help with every step along those roads. And then when one road ends and then I have to choose the next road, I get direction as to which road to take and guidance on the steps to take down that road. So at this point in time, the road that I'm walking down
00:51:39
Speaker
Well, so backing up, I mentioned I want to do a federal criminal complaint using common law. So one of the things that I want to do is add treason of oath. And I want to name all the people that have been covering up for FTB, all the legislators and the other people in the other agencies who are covering up these schemes against the taxpayers.
00:52:04
Speaker
So I've been collecting owes so that I can add treason of oath to this federal criminal complaint. And there's a lot of people that don't have owes, properly executed owes. And then I was also trying to collect bonds because bonds are also required. And it looks like the state of California isn't issuing bonds anymore.
00:52:26
Speaker
What are what are bonds? What do you mean? So the federal law requires that well, you know how like Construction workers have to be bonded So an insurance company has to issue a bond on each person so that if they screw up their job like they You can make an insurance claim with a bond company
00:52:52
Speaker
to get your money back if they screw up your construction job. So it's the same kind of thing with government employees. They're supposed to be bonded so that if they screw up and do something unlawful, the constituents can make a claim against their insurance bond and get paid for the screw up. There's compensation for the screw up.
00:53:20
Speaker
So federal law requires that all government employees take an oath and be bonded. So the state of California, while Reagan was governor, stopped issuing bonds. And now they have a blanket insurance policy. So basically, the state is ensuring itself against its own failures. So that's a conflict of interest.
00:53:46
Speaker
And if it was actually lawful, they would have repealed the bond laws from the California books, but the bond laws are still on the books, which means bonds are still legally required. So I'm still trying to figure out how they've managed to skate around the bond laws, but basically,
00:54:06
Speaker
I've contacted so many agencies to ask about bonds and no one has bond records and no one will discuss what's going on with the bond situation. But that means our entire state of California government is illegitimate. So if the whole government's illegitimate, we can remove them. So the current road that I'm walking down, and this is actually a relatively new road where I was on the one road for the federal criminal
00:54:33
Speaker
complaint via common law and now I've kind of veered down a different road with the lack of owes and bonds. So I think we should try to get our government removed because they're illegitimate without bonds and there's a lot like I said a very surprising percentage of government management upper management that doesn't have owes as well.
00:55:00
Speaker
And listening to you kind of go through this whole ordeal and like, I don't know, I don't know how online you are, but if you've ever seen the meme of like Charlie Day, do you know Charlie, and he's in that, like, and he's describing his conspiracy. He's got the billboard in the background or the whiteboard in the background. It's got all the lines connecting these dots, you know, like, that's what I feel like you've had to go through. Like where you're like, okay, this one, like all, with all the hoops and everything, like it's this big, like,
00:55:27
Speaker
Blob and and just trying to figure out how to navigate it because and it's deliberate. I mean, I imagine it's probably deliberately obtuse, you know where they make it like so obscenely just confusing and difficult so that people can't try and navigate their way through it. So
00:55:44
Speaker
If you and i don't know if you do any consultancy work or anything but it even if you know whether you do or don't but like if you were to talk to somebody else maybe in a similar situation i know you kinda mentioned another case involving like cps but whether it's taxes cps or dealing with any other like government agency like what advice would you impart to somebody else in that situation.
00:56:08
Speaker
Oh, gosh, I mean, I think I would kind of point them in the right direction of how the bureaucracy works, because like you said, they make the bureaucracy difficult to navigate by design so that people get frustrated and give up and go away. So I think what I would do is try to point people in the right direction to know how to navigate the bureaucracy and how to jump through the hoops so that they can hopefully get resolution.
00:56:38
Speaker
Would you advise somebody to go down this road based on what you've been through? I feel like it's been worth it, and I'm glad that I did, but it's been a lot of work. I'm not going to lie, it's been a lot of work.
00:56:54
Speaker
Now the court case did have time limits and demands. And so that was like a part-time job. And that was stressful. Well, that was like a full-time job at certain points. But everything else that I've done, it's been stuff that I've worked on as I have time and energy. So I'm homeschooling. I've been taking care of sick parents. I sleep a lot.
00:57:23
Speaker
You know, I don't have time to work on this all day, every day, but I work on it as I can. I work on it a little bit here, a little bit there whenever I have some time. And so I've just been a turtle. I've been slow and steady. And, you know, I get frustrated because I have a to-do list of things I want to work on that's
00:57:45
Speaker
So long. And for every one thing I cross off the list, I add 10 more things. But I just try to focus and work on one, you know, I just try to finish the one thing and then move on to the next. And I kind of rank them in order of what's most important to work on next. And sometimes I move things around in the order. But
00:58:04
Speaker
You know, I just work on it as I can, and I think if everybody tried to work on one issue, whatever that issue is, as much as they could, you know, without having to sacrifice their quality of lives, I would encourage everybody to do that. That's
Advocating Against Corruption
00:58:22
Speaker
how the world's gonna be a better place, is if everybody jumps in and does what they can, and maybe you can't do very much, but it doesn't matter. If you do something, it's better than nothing.
00:58:32
Speaker
The other thing is I picked a pretty big issue, not picked. I was chosen to fight a pretty big issue. But there's a bazillion government corruption issues going on, and people can pick small, easy ones at the local level where they go to the supervisors meetings and call them out. They don't have to necessarily take on something huge like I've taken on.
00:58:57
Speaker
But I really think the world's not going to be a better place until we all try to push back to the best of our ability.
00:59:06
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's exactly what I am trying to do in this show is to inspire, encourage others to take action. And, you know, I don't want to scare people into not taking action from hearing your story. And so it's important to understand you don't have to be Kristi Grab and be David versus Goliath. They are small. I'm just a stay at home mom. I'm not
00:59:30
Speaker
special you know but like if if i can take on the franchise tax board like people you know anybody can do stuff and again it doesn't have to be a big thing like that but you know you just have to have faith in yourself and that you're doing the right thing
00:59:48
Speaker
Well, I think that's part of the PSYOP too, is they want us to feel like it's an unwinnable battle, so don't even try. And I think maybe, and I'm probably, I'm sure I'm guilty of that, in that feeling that too, we get so black-pilled and, you know, we get so like on our side of things, like black-pilled and we feel so despondent. And like, even when you see rays of hope, you know, like maybe a Javier Malay down in Argentina, we're so, we are convinced that no, he's in on it. He's part of the, he's part of the, like, there's no,
01:00:16
Speaker
It's always part of the PSYOP. There's nobody and nothing on our side, and I don't know. Maybe that's right, maybe it's not, but I feel like you can't think like that, because then you've lost the battle before you even get out of the gate. You've got to fight, and you've got to just imagine and think that there are people and entities out there fighting for us, and if not, well, then you've got to do it. You have to be that person.
01:00:39
Speaker
I'm going to wrap up and I think you've kind of mostly already answered the question, but I do want you to just in any sort of way you feel like you'd like to, but the name of the show is What Can We Do? So what can we do to fight back against any of this tyranny, evil, anything big and small in our culture and society today? Just saying no. I'm not going to comply. I'm not going to tolerate that. I'm not going to go along with that.
01:01:05
Speaker
I mean, I did it with COVID and homeschooling. I didn't want my son wearing a mask, so I kept him home. And I didn't want my son to be vaccinated, so we dropped out of the school system completely when San Diego Unified mandated the vaccines. The vaccine mandate got repealed, but you know what?
01:01:29
Speaker
I don't want to be a part of that, so we're still homeschooling. I mean, something I think I've discovered and learned through talking to various people about these types of fights and having kind of experienced it in some sort of way myself being like a liberty activist for like the last 10 years is that it gets easier to say no.
01:01:50
Speaker
It gets easier to kind of fight and stand up and fight back for yourself. Like some people, if they haven't done it, I feel like I remember the first time just on a stupid Facebook post and you're trying to argue and get into a dialogue. Well, I've been doing that since 2010. So then when COVID comes along in 2020 and now it really is time to kind of like voice your opinion, I was like,
01:02:13
Speaker
This is it yeah like i was the first one to line up and say this is something's wrong here where is if you hadn't been doing that for the past ten years like i've been doing it was a scary step it was a scary step to maybe put out there on facebook or make a reply to somebody's comment that. You know maybe these master there's something wrong here like that felt scary but because i've been doing it for ten years i was like yeah you better believe i'm gonna be speaking out and you know so.
01:02:39
Speaker
When you start to take those steps and you build your courage up and you get the experience and you get used to maybe, yeah, you might feel a little silly at first or I don't know, you do get that feeling a little bit, but then you brush it off and you move on and then it's easier and easier and easier the next time and next time and next time you stand up.
01:03:00
Speaker
So that's all the more reason to just start doing it. It just starts small because it's going to build you up for any future trials and tribulations that you personally or, you know, as a society have to go through.
01:03:14
Speaker
I think the most important thing is to be confident in yourself. Like, uh, don't let anyone tell you you have to do anything you don't want to do. You're a sovereign person and you know, if they're violating your sovereignty, you do not have to agree to be violated. So Christie, can you tell us where we can follow you or anybody can follow along with your, your newest endeavors and your, your story?
01:03:40
Speaker
Um, so my website is, um, g w San Diego dot net slash blog. This slash blog part is important because if you just do dot net, it says unclaimed website. Um, and then I have a YouTube channel called FTB fighter. Um, but I think it's like a blacklisted because if you type in FTB fighter, it won't come up. Um, you have to, um, probably go to my website and click on a link to find it.
01:04:09
Speaker
Um, and yeah, I mean I I don't post very often but I try to post Quality information when I do um, i'm currently my big project right now is i'm working on uploading o's Uh, i've collected a bunch of o's and i've been slowly but steadily uploading them. So Um, the oath post is pinned at the top and that is probably being updated you know once a week or
01:04:37
Speaker
sometimes twice a week as I have time to work on it. And as I stated earlier, I'll of course have this on my show notes page, libertyliancenetwork.com slash what can we do. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for my mailing list so you don't miss out. I post, I send a lot of emails that, uh, uh, beyond the bounds of the show, um, emails that you actually want to read. And so Christie, I just want to thank you for your time, for your bravery, for your light,
01:05:03
Speaker
and for your willingness to stand up. I hope God continues to lead you in the right direction and protects you and your family throughout your journey. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.