Valley doctor seeks tax evasion charge dismissal based on behavior of IRS agent

WASILLA — A prominent Mat-Su Valley doctor is headed to federal court in Anchorage on Wednesday in the hopes of having tax evasion charges filed against him dismissed for reasons of inappropriate behavior by what his defense characterizes as a rogue IRS agent with a personal vendetta.

More than seven years ago, Dr. Lawrence Lawson, owner of Midnight Sun Oncology in Wasilla, was alerted by the IRS that he owed approximately $1.7 million in back taxes. Lawson’s attorneys say their client fell into arrears with the government because he had not anticipated how quickly his chemotherapy clinic — the only of its kind in Wasilla — would prosper, and that his client liquidated assets and made good on that total.

Later, however, IRS officials determined he actually owed more than the original $1.7 million, according to Lawson’s defense, and charged him with tax evasion. According to the motion filed by the defense, evidence, including affidavits from the woman who had been dating the allegedly rogue agent, as well as another IRS employee who claims to have witnessed John Williamson illegally break into Lawson’s personal airplane hangar, has come to light casting aspersions on the entire prosecution.

In her affidavit, Tonya Barber says she began dating the IRS agent Williamson in the spring of 2011. Barber, who at the time went by the name Tonya Naquin, had been a patient of Lawson’s and after she and the agent broke up, she began renting living space in a Wasilla-area airplane hangar owned by the doctor in Sept. of 2011.

Barber testifies that Williamson told her not to move into Lawson’s property because he had been working the Lawson case. Barber moved in anyway and, she claims, Williamson harassed her there repeatedly.

In April of 2012, Barber says Williamson may have entered her residence without her knowing, a suspicion that was validated by another affidavit from IRS revenue officer Amber Kimmel, whose job was to collect delinquent tax accounts and whose supervisor at the time was Williamson.

Kimmel testifies that on April 4, 2012, she was riding in an IRS car in the Mat-Su Valley driven by Williamson and that Williamson drove to Lawson’s hangar to “check something out.”

Williamson then got out of the car, and, according to the affidavit, told Kimmel, “said "what you are about to see, you never saw.”

Kimmel said she told Williamson to not get out of the car, but he did anyway and entered Lawson’s private property without permission.

Kimmel said she filed a complaint with her supervisors that day, and said that Williamson was put on 30 days probation for his behavior.

Kimmel said she left the IRS in 2017 and in April of this year, she says she received a phone call from another former supervisor of hers who’d received a subpoena to testify at Lawson’s trial in August. Kimmel said she asked how the IRS planned to address the issue of Williamson’s behavior and alleged break-in and the supervisor told her, “hopefully that doesn’t come out.”

California-based attorneys Ariana Seldman Hawbecker and John Littrell credit Kimmel for being a “whistleblower” bringing their attention to the development, which prompted a motion to dismiss that was slated for Wednesday June 20 in Anchorage.

Late on Thursday, however, the court revealed that the government had produced 1,500 pages of documents between June 4 and June 13 related to the case and that the judge would not have time to review them in time for the June 20 evidentiary hearing.

Wednesday’s hearing will instead be a status hearing with the evidentiary hearing continued.

Lawson’s trial is still expected to begin in August, barring dismissal.