Hatch

PROVIDENCE — If Survivor star Richard Hatch can’t be a free man, he wants to be free to serve his time on supervised release in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and travel wherever he pleases to make guest appearances on the popular CBS reality show.

Hatch filed a motion in U.S. District Court this week asking for travel freedom and to live in Argentina during his term under supervision because he is married to an Argentine national whose family is unable to travel to the United States.

He has asked the court to let him visit Argentina and pursue income opportunities abroad, should it deny his request to live in Argentina. He repeats his contention that he was wrongfully convicted of tax evasion.

Hatch became famous as the openly gay contestant who competed in the nude and won the first season of the wildly popular reality television show with his cunning antics.

Hatch, 47, of Newport, is due to be released from federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va., to a halfway house on May 12. Six months later his supervised release would begin.

The federal government is opposing the motion, arguing that his sentence requires that he complete mental-health counseling, file amended tax returns for 2000 and 2001 and pay $400,000 in back taxes. Hatch has not filed corrected tax returns or paid any of the taxes owed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew J. Reich wrote.

The government will seek to revoke the supervised release if Hatch does not file an amended tax return. That will be difficult if he is in Argentina or even traveling internationally, Reich said.

He “describes himself as ‘a rational, nonsmoking, drug-free and responsible citizen ...’ who is not in need of supervision,” Reich wrote. “He overlooks the fact, however, that [former Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C.] Torres found that Hatch is in need of supervision, including mental-health counseling. Part of his reasoning in this regard was based on the fact [that] Hatch perjured himself extensively during the trial.”

In 2006, a federal jury found Hatch guilty of not paying the taxes he owed on about $1.4 million, including the $1-million prize he collected for winning the first season of the reality show. He was convicted of filing false tax returns and given the maximum sentence allowed after Torres concluded that he had obstructed justice when he “willfully gave false testimony.” He was sentenced to 51 months in prison and three years of supervised release, meaning he would be under the supervision of a federal probation officer.

The U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction for tax evasion and his 51-month sentence in February 2008 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

Supervised release is generally served in the district where an individual is sentenced, but that person may apply for a transfer of supervision to another state, according to Chief U.S. Probation Officer Barry Weiner. Supervision typically does not extend beyond the United States, but a judge conceivably could agree to an arrangement with another country, he said.

Weiner could recall only one time the court allowed an international transfer of supervision and that was with Canada.

In March, Hatch asked the U.S. District Court to clear him of his conviction or order a retrial or hear new evidence about his arguments that he had poor legal representation from Texas lawyer Michael Minns.

kmulvane@projo.com