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Petitioners also concede that Strohmeier served no
meaningful function as “manager” of Oak Hill. Similarly, there
is no evidence that Strohmeier’s successor, Ellering, served any
meaningful function as manager of Oak Hill. In fact, there is no
evidence that Oak Hill ever conducted any business at all.10
Upon the alleged creation of Oak Hill, no economic interest
passed to any beneficiary other than petitioners. Nor does the
record establish that the subsequent purported transfer to BBCA
of 60 percent of petitioners’ shares in Oak Hill was a valid
conveyance of petitioners’ economic interests. To the contrary,
at trial petitioners vigorously asserted that they never
knowingly authorized any such transfer of their shares to BBCA.
Petitioners assert that they had motives apart from tax-
avoidance for establishing Oak Hill, but any such motives are not
credibly established on this record. For example, petitioners
argue that Oak Hill was created for estate-planning purposes “to
10 On brief, petitioners seek to attribute to Parnell and
Armageddon the activities of the Noskes, arguing that Parnell and
Armageddon controlled Oak Hill’s “checkbook” through the agency
of the Noskes. Petitioners have not established, however, that
the Noskes were in fact the agents of Parnell or Armageddon.
There is no mention of the Noskes in the Declaration of Trust.
There is no evidence that the Noskes were authorized to or
actually did assume the fiduciary duties allegedly imposed on the
corporate trustees under the purported trust documents. Rather,
the totality of the evidence strongly suggests that the Noskes
provided petitioners with bookkeeping services, for which they
were compensated, and bad advice as part of a conspiracy to
defraud the United States, for which they were imprisoned.
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