Convicted tax cheat Wesley Snipes will appear on CNN’s “Larry King Live” before surrendering to prison authorities on Thursday.
In 2008 Snipes was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax returns. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Since then, Snipes has lost a series of appeals and requests for new trials. Earlier this week, a judge denied Snipes’ request to delay the start of his prison sentence until after the holidays.
His motion said Snipes has four young children ranging in age from 4 to 9, and the “surrender date is in the middle of the holiday season.”
But the judge ruled: “The natural and inevitable consequence of any substantial sentence or imprisonment is to separate Defendant from his family during holidays and at all other times of significance to a particular family unit -birthdays, weddings, and the like.”
Prior to his conviction, Snipes had been a member of an obscure cult whose leader didn’t believe in paying taxes.
Snipes also claimed that as a “fiduciary of God, who is a ‘nontaxpayer,’” he was a “‘foreign diplomat’” who was not obliged to pay taxes.
Snipes failed to file tax returns for the years 1999 to 2004 on earnings of $37 million.
According to CNN’s Marquee blog, the actor will sit down for his only interview Tuesday (today) on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” Snipes is scheduled to report to the Federal Correctional Institution McKean at Lewis Run, Pennsylvania on Thursday, December 9.
