COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The author of the book, 'Pay No Income Taxes Without Going to Jail,' was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to defraud the federal government.
Phillip Fry, 42, former owner of the Tax Information Center, a tax and financial investment service, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Joseph P. Kinneary.
The charge resulted from a two-year investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.
Fry and Barbara J. Schaer, 53, pleaded guilty June 30 to the charge. Schaer managed the Tax Information Center's tax preparation office in Butler, Pa., and helped market fraudulent deductions, the IRS said.
Kinneary sentenced Schaer to three years in jail, but suspended 2 years of the sentence and placed her on probation for that period.
As part of a plea bargain, 16 other charges against Fry were dropped.
Fry also owned Freedom Fuel Corp., which was used to create tax deductions for Fry's tax clients through promotion and sale of worldwide franchises to distribute gasohol.
Fry also wrote, 'Our Lady of Perpetual Deductions,' a book advising people how to establish churches to avoid taxes.
The IRS estimates the fradulent tax shelters of Fry and Schaer, both of Mesa, Ariz., cost the government about $13 million in false deductions on about 300 tax returns filed throughout the country.
The IRS also accused Fry of bilking his clients out of several hundred thousand dollars in fees and investment payments.
Fry also was known in Ohio and Texas for his amusement park operations in the early 1980s. He ran Paradise Lake in Cambridge, Ohio, and Prarie Dell Lake in Prairie Dell, Texas, until he filed for bankruptcy.
