For any non-nefarious organization, multiple arrests resulting from criminal acts of espionage would seem like a black mark. For the Church of Scientology, however, it was just the naturally broken eggs that came from making their impeccable tax-free omelet. After that it was just a matter of annoying and harassing the IRS so unyieldingly that the exhausted agency would eventually cave, like an AT-AT being gradually lassoed down to the frozen earth. This was achieved with the elegant art of filing literally thousands of lawsuits against the IRS, along with hiring private investigators to dig into the lives of its employees. By 1997, when the Church offered to help drop their 2,200 lawsuits in exchange for tax-exempt status, the IRS instantly agreed to play ball, because dealing with every single one of those lawsuits would've taken years of time and resources.
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Remember, these are the people that had no fear in being able to take down Al Capone and Blade.
This victory was doubly important for the Church of Scientology -- not only did it earn them the tax-exempt status to avoid paying the billion-dollar tax bill L. Ron Hubbard had spent the last two decades of his life avoiding, it also demonstrated to the world that not even the U.S. government could withstand their campaigns of concentrated litigious harassment, which is just one of the many reasons why most organizations would bend over backward to never see these people in court ...
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