GERALD E. ROSEN, Chief District Judge.
Defendant Vernon Lawson is named along with four other defendants in a March 4, 2014 indictment, and is charged in four counts of this eleven-count indictment with (i) conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 286 (Count One), (ii) filing a false claim with the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), an agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 287 (Count Three), and (iii) two counts of aiding and abetting in the preparation and filing of a false claim against the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 287 and 2 (Counts Six and Seven). Each of these charges rests upon allegations that Defendant participated in a scheme to file false claims for income tax refunds with the IRS, and to recruit additional individuals to file false tax returns claiming refunds to which these individuals were not entitled.
Through the present pro se motion filed on March 11, 2014 — just a few days after the grand jury returned its indictment — Defendant seeks the dismissal of the charges against him on a number of grounds. At a hearing held on April 8, 2014, the Court determined that Defendant had knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to be represented by counsel, but nonetheless appointed standby counsel who will be available to assist Defendant, despite his repeated insistence that he did not want and would not avail himself of the services of standby counsel. The Court further instructed the Government to respond to Defendant's motion to dismiss, and allowed Defendant the opportunity to file a reply in further support of his motion.
Defendant's motion has now been fully briefed by the parties, and the Court addressed this motion at a July 2, 2014 hearing. For the reasons stated on the record at the July 2 hearing, as supplemented by the rulings below, the Court denies Defendant's motion.
In his present motion, Defendant purports to raise 25 issues for the Court's consideration. (See Defendant's Motion at 2-3.) The bulk of these issues, however, are not further discussed (or even mentioned) in the balance of Defendant's motion, and "[i]t is well-established that issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argument, are deemed waived." Dillery v. City of Sandusky, 398 F.3d 562, 569 (6th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Bishop v. Gosiger, Inc., 692 F.Supp.2d 762, 774 (E.D. Mich. 2010) ("It is not sufficient for a party to mention a possible argument in a most skeletal way, leaving the court to put flesh on its bones." (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). In addition, many of these purported "issues" incorporate the usual tax protestor stock-in-trade — e.g., appeals to Uniform Commercial Code provisions as somehow governing the proceedings in this criminal case — or pose broad rhetorical questions that are wholly immaterial to the present inquiry — e.g., Defendant's issue number 19, which asks whether "a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure [may] deprive a defendant of his due process right," (Defendant's Motion at 3). Having thoroughly reviewed Defendant's motion, and being mindful that the submissions of pro se litigants are "held to less stringent standards than those prepared by attorneys," Martin v. Overton, 391 F.3d 710, 712 (6th Cir. 2004), the Court is able to discern three substantive challenges to the charges brought against Defendant in this case. The Court addresses each of these challenges in turn, and concludes that none of them has merit.
First, Defendant faults the Government for failing to "submit[] any evidence or offer of proof" that would support the charges brought against him. (Defendant's Motion at 6; see also id. at 10, 14 (insisting that the Government will be unable to establish one or more of the elements of the charges in Counts Three, Six, and Seven of the indictment).) Plainly, however, the Government is not obliged to prove the allegations of the indictment at this threshold stage of this case. Rather, the indictment is sufficient so long as it "fully, directly, and expressly sets forth all the elements necessary to constitute the offense intended to be punished." United States v. McAuliffe, 490 F.3d 526, 531 (6th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks, alterations, and citation omitted). Moreover, in assessing the sufficiency of an indictment, the Court must construe it "liberally in favor of its sufficiency," and must accept its factual allegations as true. McAuliffe, 490 F.3d at 531. Defendant will have the opportunity at trial to challenge the factual basis for the Government's allegations of criminal wrongdoing, and to insist that the Government prove each of the elements of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.
In his motion and reply brief, however, Defendant insists that the Government will be unable to prove at least one of the elements of each of the offenses charged in the indictment — namely, the requirements under the statutes cited in the indictment (i) that the fraudulent scheme in which Defendant allegedly participated must have been directed against "the United States, or any department or agency thereof," 18 U.S.C. § 286, and (ii) that he presented allegedly fraudulent claims "upon or against the United States, or any department or agency thereof," 18 U.S.C. § 287. In Defendant's view, the charged offenses rest upon the premise that the IRS is the requisite "agency" of the United States to which fraudulent claims allegedly were presented, but he asserts that the IRS is not, in fact, an agency of the U.S. Government.
Defendant's argument on this point, however, evidently rests almost exclusively on a statement in an answer filed by the United States in a 1993 civil suit brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, in which the Government "[d]enie[d] that the Internal Revenue Service is an agency of the United States Government but admit[ted] that the United States of America would be a proper party to this action." (See Defendant's Motion, Ex. A, Diversified Metal Products, Inc. v. T-Bow Company Trust, et al., No. 93-405 (D. Idaho), Answer at ¶ 4.)
Next, Defendant challenges the process through which charges were brought against him in this case, apparently contending that his due process rights were violated when the Government failed to commence this suit through the filing of a criminal complaint and accompanying affidavits setting forth probable cause for the charges brought against him. Yet, Defendant's various arguments on this point ignore the fact that this case was commenced through the grand jury's return of an indictment charging Defendant and his four co-defendants with various criminal offenses. As the Supreme Court has explained, "an indictment, fair upon its face, and returned by a properly constituted grand jury, conclusively determines the existence of probable cause and requires issuance of an arrest warrant without further inquiry." Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 117 n.19, 95 S.Ct. 854, 865 n.19 (1975) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Although Defendant cites various authorities indicating that a criminal case may be commenced and an arrest warrant issued pursuant to a criminal complaint filed by a United States Attorney, see, e.g., Fed. R. Crim. P. 4(a) (authorizing the issuance of an arrest warrant upon the filing of a complaint and accompanying affidavits that "establish probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed and that the defendant committed it"); 18 U.S.C. § 3045 (authorizing this procedure to prosecute alleged "violations of internal revenue laws"),
Finally, Defendant seems to suggest that his due process rights were violated when a grand jury was seated without him first having the opportunity to challenge the qualifications of the grand jurors. The source of this posited right to "pre-screen" the grand jury, however, is nowhere identified in Defendant's motion. While Defendant points to Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(b) as conferring upon him the right to lodge objections to the grand jury, and to seek the dismissal of the indictment in light of these objections, nothing in this provision requires that such objections be heard and resolved while the grand jury is in session, and before it has even returned the indictment at issue. If Defendant is able during the course of these proceedings to identify any viable grounds upon which the grand jury or an individual grand juror might legitimately be subject to challenge, he is free to raise such objections at that time, and to seek the dismissal of the indictment on those grounds. At present, however, there is no basis whatsoever for Defendant's complaint that he has somehow been "denied" his right to challenge the grand jury, as he has failed to offer anything beyond bare conjecture that there might be grounds for such a challenge in this case.
For the reasons stated at the July 2, 2014 hearing, as supplemented by the reasoning and rulings set forth above,
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendant Vernon Lawson's March 11, 2014 motion to dismiss indictment (docket #7) is DENIED.
In addition, while Defendant's motion is far from clear on this point, he appears to suggest that the allegations of the indictment are insufficient to establish the Court's subject matter jurisdiction over this case. Yet, the indictment unquestionably charges Defendant with violations of federal statutes — specifically, 18 U.S.C. §§ 286, 287, and 2 — and the Supreme Court has long since confirmed that the federal district courts are vested with subject matter jurisdiction in cases charging "offenses against the laws of the United States." United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 65-66, 71 S.Ct. 595, 599 (1951) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3231); see also United States v. Marks, 530 F.3d 799, 810 (9th Cir. 2008) (holding that "[t]he government here met its burden of establishing both subject matter and personal jurisdiction" by pointing to an indictment charging the defendant with federal offenses, and "by virtue of [the defendant] having been brought before [the district court] on a federal indictment charging a violation of federal law"). Thus, Defendant's apparent challenge to the Court's subject matter jurisdiction is wholly without merit.