In a heart-wrenching testimony that reads like a plot from a dystopian novel, Todd Tomasella, a former Marine and NASA engineer, reveals the dark underbelly of the Texas “child support” system—a system he claims operates more like a criminal RICO operation than a judicial entity meant to protect the rights and welfare of children.
After honorably serving the United States as one of only five Marines promoted out of boot camp and later securing a top-secret security clearance to support NASA missions, Tomasella’s life took a turn for the worse when he became entangled in the nefarious webs of Kaufman County’s legal system.
Despite fulfilling his financial obligations under the strictures of Texas State law (Texas Family Code, Chapter 154), which dictates child support should not exceed 20% of one’s earnings, he found himself incarcerated for 16.5 months for “underpaying” child support. This action directly contravenes the Texas State Constitution, which explicitly states, “No person shall ever be imprisoned for debt.”
Requests for recalculations based on actual earnings and payments were allegedly ignored, leaving him with an inflated and unjust financial burden that ultimately drove him to relocate to Mexico for peace and freedom from persecution.
This move marked him as a fugitive, with a perpetual felony warrant over his head, barring him from returning to the United States—a country for which he once proudly served.
From his forced exile, he has continued to voice out against what he describes as a systemic racket that not only strips parents of their dignity and financial stability but also cruelly separates them from their children under the guise of “child support.”
According to the lawsuit he filed:
Plaintiff alleges that in 1995, an El Paso county clerk “sold [him] a marriage license to wed his mate” but failed “to provide adequate notice [ ] that by signing the license,” he could be ordered to pay child support for any children born during the marriage.
Since separating from his wife in 1999, he has made monthly child support payments to her in the total amount of $65,531.00. He claims that the “child support division” (CSD) of the AG’s office is a for profit business, that he was “compelled [ ] to be a customer of the CSD against his will,” and that it “gain[ed] substantial profits from subjecting him to deprivation of his” rights.
These profits are gained by selling CSD’s “services” and forcing individuals to be “customers” of the CSD. When he was unable to make his monthly child support payments, he was arrested and incarcerated on three separate occasions between April 3, 2013 and June 1, 2015, spending a total of 595 days in jail.
After Plaintiff filed this lawsuit on February 25, 2020, the defendants moved to dismiss all claims against them for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and/or failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. He then sought and obtained leave to file a first amended complaint.
His first amended complaint alleges that Defendants violated his constitutional rights and that their “unlawful actions . . . resulted in [his] suffering over 20 years of psychological trauma including the looming, perpetual fear and embarrassment of being arrested, the loss of companionship of [his] only child, and complete financial ruin[.]”
Read his statement to The Gateway Pundit:
Like millions of other men and women in the USA, my life has been destroyed through the “child support” system which is a criminal RICO operation.
After being meritoriously promoted as 1 of only 5 Marines out of boot camp and 6.5 years later honorably discharged, I was unlawfully arrested and unlawfully incarcerated in Texas.
Also, served with NASA for 7 years with a top-secret security clearance, only later to be jailed for 16.5 months after paying the debt they jailed me for not paying. Actually, I am completely satisfied with that debt if not overpaying according to their own Texas State law (20%).
By jailing me at all, they broke their own law. Kaufman County, Texas violated my rights per Article 1, Section 18 of the Texas State Constitution.
In violation of my civil rights, I was never offered a jury trial. My child’s mother intentionally and only brought my son to court when she knew I was going to be handcuffed and escorted out of the courtroom.
She did this to show my son just how “horrible” his father was. This was all facilitated and orchestrated by the corrupt operatives in Kaufman County, Texas.
So, Kaufman County has been stealing from THE PEOPLE for DECADES, and now people are panicking because someone wants them to be responsible, wants them to use a calculator to keep their own laws, wants them to be responsible and just?
Now they are panicking because someone wants them to finally look at the books?
After being attacked, politically prosecuted by the “authorities” in Kaufman County, Texas since 2002, including being jailed for 16.5 months WHILE I was paying child support for not paying enough “child support.” Yes I was jailed for not paying child support while I was every month paying child support.
With much prayer and years of toil and careful thought, along with trepidation, I packed my goods, got in my vehicle, and crossed over into Mexico in order to live free.
I was in great fear, not knowing if I’d be arrested at the border. Kaufman County Texas has a felony warrant out for my arrest which will never go away unless there is intervention to this injustice.
They prosecuted me mercilessly to steal my money and vindictively because I had previously owned, published a website that was exposing how they were stealing children from their parents for nothing, no valid reason.
I have records in my possession of numerous parents who were victims of this evil in Kaufman County.
Famously, there is the Pardo family case where their 4-year-old boy was taken from them also for no reason, and the Texas State Senator had to step in to get their child back.
State Senator Bob Hall got involved and the Texas Supreme Court ordered that Kaufman County CPS release the child back to his parents.
All the other victims of Kaufman County, including my son and I, were not so lucky.
After crossing the border, a weight was lifted. No longer is another incarceration eminent, looming (it would seem) now that I am in a free country.
This is particularly egregious after serving our country in the United States Marine Corps beginning in 1981.
Having been brought up to love our country, my brother and I enlisted in Marine Corp boot camp in 1981 and were both meritoriously promoted out of boot camp, an honor given to the top 5 graduating recruits of each platoon.
I was honorably discharged in 1988. I also served for 7 years with a top-secret clearance for the NASA space program in the HOSC (Huntsville Operations Support Center) as an MDM operation and Data Control Engineer, supporting the shuttle missions.
It feels awkward to be shut out of my own country of origin, where I was born, raised and am a citizen and a veteran.
At this time I am unable to return to my homeland, the United States of America, due to not having a passport, which I cannot attain due to having over $2,500 in “child support” arrearage. Before I departed to Mexico, I filed the paperwork for a passport and received a nasty rejection response.
Due to being politically prosecuted, incarcerated, and refused the right to have my case simply trued up, calculated to see if I owe any money per the 20% child support law, I no longer have peace within the borders of the United States of America.
PTSD from the threat of further incarcerations throughout the remainder of my natural life, leaves my soul in a state of unrest, turmoil.
For now, I am more at peace in Mexico. And yet, my parents, now 87 and 85, are also victims. They will never see me, their son, again, unless there is a miracle.
I have been doing ministry since 1987 and have now been in the ministry full-time for 15 years. That would be before the time I was incarcerated. My income has never been high.
The biggest year I had was 2008 where I earned $56,000 (gross), which is far higher than the other years.
Kaufman County made it clear that no matter how much money I earned, they were going to take most of it. It’s a miracle I made it through those years and was even homeless for a time.
But most victims of the Kaufman County system, like myself, have no help. There is no where to turn. I had my son removed from me for “praying with, reading the Bible with, and being too affectionate with” per CPS Kaufman, Texas.
The mother violated the judge’s order, which required her to return our child to his father for the final days of summer visitation. Instead of complying with the order, she took an unexpected step to avoid further consequences in court.
She voluntarily handed our child over to CPS, effectively shifting the situation, the case, to their involvement and avoiding further direct accountability in the main court. This action occurred at a critical point in the case, complicating the situation further.
There is only 1 “injured party” in and throughout this case, and that would be myself, my son’s father.
The mother had free reign in the Kaufman court, made outlandishly exaggerated and fabricated claims of supposed abuse.
She told CPS that I, the father of my son, “forced him” to “pray for hours.”
As an adult, I don’t even “pray for hours”, never have, not one day in my life. So why, how would I force my son to do such?
These claims were fabricated or grossly exaggerated intentionally.
The whole Kaufman County system is one seamless operation to bring about the desired outcome of its operatives.
These same claims were made before that same judge (Howard Tygrett) who had a long history with this case and who shrugged the claims off, because he saw right through them, he saw the manipulative agenda of the child’s mother and her attorney.
The judge followed up in that same hearing with ordering the mother to release the son to his father (myself) on a certain date.
She violated this order and swiftly turned her own child over to CPS to get her out of a tight spot, out of being held accountable for violating the judge’s order.
Regrettably, that same judge (Tygrett), who was near retirement, signed off on it. The case then went to the man-hating woke operatives of the CPS sham court in Kaufman County.
One of the counselors in this case found that the mother was “coaching” the child. The court conveniently ignored such due to their mission to politically prosecute me. Another counselor in this case made the uninvited personal admission that she had seen “no abuse in this case.”
That original handwritten letter, written by this female counselor (Carla Herron), was submitted to the court and it magically disappeared.
In any court case, the complainant many times makes the defendant look like an abusive religious extremist in order to gain the court’s favor.
Kaufman County was more than appreciative to take whatever the child’s mother said as gospel, in order to politically prosecute me, a man who was exposing their dark deeds publicly.
They removed my son from me for no valid reason, and the damage is irreparable and remains to this day.
To this day, my son Micah is married with 2 young daughters and refuses to communicate with me. This was all perpetrated and facilitated by the corrupt civil “servants” of Kaufman County, Texas. They are unrepentant.
Every court hearing in Kaufman County is pre-planned. It simply doesn’t matter what kind of lawyer you hire, the good ole boys already have your fate decided – before the hearing ever happens. It’s all pre-scripted.
In my opinion, Kaufman County needs to be investigated. I have a personal record of many people who registered with me alarming complaints.
This repeated incarceration is in clear violation of the Texas State Constitution Article 1 Section 18, which states, “BILL OF RIGHTS Article 1 Section 18 of Texas State Constitution—IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. ‘No person shall ever be imprisoned for debt.’
They have to separate parents and their children to justify charging “child support” so they can get paid! The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that judges cannot use “contempt of court” to get around this.
This unlawful arrangement where the judges are paid a % of the “child support” they collect, incentivizes them to put people into slavery for their own financial gain.
First they identify the money earner of the divorce parties and target that person by removing the child(ren) from them on any trumped up accusation. This they do in order to charge that money earner “child support” out of which they get paid retirement money.
The judges in this case put me under debt slavery for their own self-serving gain and that’s the very reason it’s unlawful for them to get paid to collect “child support.”
“Child support” collection was previously done by non-government entities for this reason.
Yet the government, the states saw how much money they could make and so took it in-house. RICO.
They, the authorities in Kaufman County had the FBI pull me out of my cell within 24 hours of being incarcerated and threatened to put federal charges on me if I didn’t take down my site, which was KaufmanCountyCorruption.com.
The site was getting thousands of visitors daily, especially during the time the whole nation’s attention was on Kaufman due to the Kaufman County murders. The Kaufman operatives were furious that they were being exposed.
The FBI agents “forced,” coerced me to call my close friend Bill Wegener who very reluctantly took down the site. He was and is still angered by such. I was under strong coercion and threat by the FBI in that small room where 2 FBI agents sat me down, cornered, and threatened.
I still have full record of that site if needed which includes the testimonies of numerous parents who suffered the irreparable loss of their children at the hands of Kaufman County good ole boys network. There were no violations of law on my website but rather simply an exercise of my First Amendment Rights.
I was incarcerated at the exact same time the Eric Williams murders took place.
On the day I arrived at the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office to turn myself in, following the judge’s orders, every major media outlet had their satellite trucks parked right outside.
Eric Williams, now on death row for the murders of the District Attorney, his wife, and the Assistant District Attorney, was actually my son’s court-appointed Guardian Ad Litem.
The judge had ordered me to pay Mr. Williams $5,500.
Judge Ruth Blake (now deceased) also ordered me to pay $5,000 to the opposing attorney.
This was in addition to the tens of thousands in outrageously inflated, grossly overcharged “child support” that I couldn’t afford to pay.
They just kept piling on the financial burden, leaving me crushed under the weight of it all.
Linda Dugan was a well-established part of the Kaufman good ole boys crime syndicate. She was the court assigned counselor for my son Micah and I. We met monthly at her compound.
That’s all the time I had with my son and it included Linda breathing down our necks. Linda was operating while having several DUI/DWI’s. She was apparently doing favors for the court while they allowed her to operate as a criminal in their system.
Linda was finally stripped of her license due to her own criminal activities. During this whole time, Linda’s own counseling, business partner Carla Herron, after many months of counseling with Micah and I, of her own accord, stated that she had seen “no abuse in this whole case.”
She’s the one who handwrote the letter to the court on her own letterhead.
Carla’s handwritten letter was removed from the court’s record illegally. Carla Herron was not part of the good ole boys network and so she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to say anything like this to me—that she had seen no abuse in this case.
I have a lady friend who is witness to this corruption. She lives in Kaufman County and is an Army officer.
She is going through the same thing and so based on that has kept in touch with me for 2-3 years now.
At the 6-month mark of that 9-month sentence, my court-appointed attorney filed an appeal to the superior court in Dallas and the judges ordered my immediate release at the 6-month mark.
The Kaufman sheriff released me only to be relentlessly badgered by the opposing attorney (Michael Mowla).
The sheriff’s office called me 48 hours later, after my release, to request that I return to jail for the remaining 3 months.
I complied freely and drove from Dallas to meet the police at a designated location and was re-incarcerated for another 3 months.
In 2016, after being jailed twice for a total of 16.5 months (between 2013-2015), I sent my attorney and a signed Power of Attorney letter with him to the scheduled court hearing (judge Casey Blair).
Blair is one of the smooth operatives who was going to jail me yet again WHILE I was paying “child support” monthly. They were infuriated that I didn’t show up in person to be jailed again.
This is the testimony of my associates who were present at that hearing. They were going to jail/incarcerate me again and so by that time I had enough of this unlawful prosecution and incarceration and took off for Colorado after being invited to go and care-give for an elderly couple who are lifelong friends.
They are both passed now. It was a 3 year reprieve. Kaufman County was executing their plan to incarcerate me repeatedly for the remainder of my natural life.
A felony arrest warrant was put on me after not showing up in person for that 2016 hearing and still stands today. This felony warrant is based on a debt, something no man can be jailed for, according to Texas State Constitution Article 1 Section 18.
To date, I have paid $65,531 of “child support” for my one son, who is now 28, and still turned against me as a result of the abuse suffered in Kaufman County, Texas. This is all on record with the Texas AG office. I have the PDF in my possession.
I was grossly overcharged for the whole time paying “child support” and so now the AG office of Texas says I owe over $80,000, on top of the $65,531 I’ve already paid, and that amount increases each and every month for late fee and interest-type penalties.
After kindly asking the court numerous times to simply recalculate what “child support” I should have been charged against what I paid or owe, they refused. They conveniently ignored my requests.
This is because they know if anything, they owe me money for overpaying. Their own law says the “child support” is to be 20% of the earnings of the payer.
Anyone who can use a calculator and puts my IRS earnings next to what I paid, will see I paid at least 20%. But this was a political witch hunt executed by the Kaufman County Texas corrupt operatives. Their goal was to destroy me, my life.
Since when is the calculator rejected to balance the books in a court of law? What are they hiding? What don’t they wish to find out?
What they did is bring in a “visiting Judge” from a neighboring county to do their dirty work so as to keep their own noses looking clean, to escape accountability.
The “visiting judge” was a very old lady in a wheel chair, in her mid 80’s at the time. She has now passed away (2016).
She was obviously directed, a puppet. She jailed me twice, WHILE having in her very hands the proof, the records that I was paying “child support” each and every month.
So her reason for jailing me was that I was in contempt of her court for not paying enough “child support.”
At the end of the first 9 months of incarceration, the day before my long awaited release, my court appointed attorney came to visit me in jail to show me that I had to, under coercion, sign a contract vowing to pay $1,300 per month “child support” after coming “flat-footed” out of jail after 9 months.
It was presented as if I had to sign it in order to get released the next day.
So the “child support” order for $900 a month, which I couldn’t possibly pay, was intentionally raised to $1,300 per month.
This they did, knowing I could never pay that much, in order to be able to jail me again. And that’s exactly what they did for another 7 months in that dungeon of a jail.
In 2020 (or 2021), I had an attorney do the paperwork, and pro se filed an extensive federal lawsuit with mountains of violations against my rights, and it was dismissed in federal court and then also in the 5th district court of appeals in New Orleans.
At that point, it dawned on me that the whole “legal” system is completely corrupt.
If the federal court had ruled justly in my case, that would have exposed the whole RICO “child support” criminal scheme that destroys lives and familial bonds. See Tomasella vs Texas.
While the court paperwork states “In the interest of the child, Micah David Tomasella”, how is destroying my son’s essential familial bond with his own father in his “interest”? It’s not.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12).
In reality it was in the interest of the vindictive players in the Kaufman County system to make an example out of me for daring to expose what they were doing.
It is always unlawfully set up for them to make money off of me as the judges are paid a percentage of the “child support” they received and so they are incentivized to raise and never recalculate the “child support” amount if their victim begins to make less money.
It is truly befuddling that in a very court of law, even when asked, no one will take out a calculator to simply true the balance, to weigh debits from credits, to right the balance owed.
There is no business anywhere in the world where this is not done except the courts in the USA where the judges are contracted with a 1099 to be paid by the SSA IV-D program.
They refuse to calculate because it would take money out of their pockets. This is part of what my lawsuit exposed.
The judges are criminally taking wages, getting paid to collect “child support” and are therefore incentivized to jack it up high as they can and never recalculate, lest they take money out of their own pockets.
These men are traitors, criminals. It’s time for justice. They have ruthlessly destroyed countless lives.
They have left a trail of broken hearts and lives for their own greed-driven self-serving purposes.
After sending this brief to a close friend, she sent back the following passage:
“How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law. All thy commandments are faithful: they persecute me wrongfully; help thou me. They had almost consumed me upon earth; but I forsook not thy precepts. Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth. LAMED. For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” Psalms 119:84-89
The Gateway Pundit has reached out to the Texas Department of Child Support for comment on these allegations.
The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publication or the author.
The post The American Nightmare: How the Texas “Child Support” System Crushed a Veteran and NASA Engineer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.