The tables have been turned on a money manager and financial writer who claimed to have the off-shore answer to protecting wealth that would make ?lawsuit predators weep?.

Because despite advising investors how to shield money offshore from lawsuits Terry Coxon has found no safe haven in Bermuda from US tax authorities pursuing a $1.5 million liability against him.

Government has been judged right by the Bermuda Supreme Court in giving US tax inspectors the green light to check Mr. Coxon?s on-Island financial affairs.

The author of the book ?Keep What You Earn? was unsuccessful in a legal bid to quash Finance Minister Paula Cox?s decision to allow US tax authorities to investigate his and his company Passport Financial Incorporated?s affairs in Bermuda.

It brings the Island into an intriguing saga that dates back to the 1980s and continues to rumble through the US court system.

And it adds a question mark to the wisdom money manager and writer Mr. Coxon shared until very recently on web-sites.

?Repackage your assets to make them difficult or virtually impossible for a future lawsuit to reach them,? he recommended in a series of articles for the Free Market News Network.

And on his own now defunct Passport Financial web-site, he said: ?Place your wealth beyond easy reach of anyone who might want to sue you. When you transfer your assets to the Trust, the Trust owns them, not you, thus you can?t be forced to hand them over to the victor of a lawsuit.?

Appearing to follow his own advice, Mr. Coxon moved $500,000 of wealth off-shore to the Cayman Islands before a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation ? and its $1.5m liability order ? reached its conclusion in 2003, US court documents state.

He set up a ?Passport Trust? in the name of his late mother Patricia, of which $500,000 has been argued through the US courts as being his own personal asset.

Bermuda is now involved because Mr. Coxon is an officer and director of Passport Financial (Cayman) which gives advice to offshore institutions in Bermuda and also has a bank account in Bermuda. The presence of money belonging to Mr. Coxon is of interest to the US tax authorities seeking the full $1.5m liability order made by SEC.

A inter-related set-up of fund portfolios and underwriting services controlled to varying degrees by Mr. Coxon was found by SEC to have been involved in ?self-dealing, anti-fraud violations and other investment company governance provisions.?

When everything was totted up, the amount Mr. Coxon was ordered to pay in disgorgement and interest was $1.5 million.

But even as the SEC investigation took place Mr. Coxon carried out financial transactions that clouded the picture when the time finally came for him to show what assets he had control over in order to pay the order.

As well as the aforementioned setting up of a Trust fund in the Cayman Islands, Mr. Coxon?s wife Elizabeth bought a $1.3-million new home for the couple in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.

Attorneys for SEC argued through the California courts that the home was actually an asset belonging to Mr. Coxon, despite having been bought in his wife?s name, as $300,000 in loans from the Cayman Islands-based Trust had been used in the house purchase.

That house has now been sold and, in December 2006, a US district court in California ordered that $515,123 in cash that was realised from the sale be taken as part payment of the outstanding $1.5m liability.

US tax authorities have now taken a closer watch on what other money Mr. Coxon may still control off-shore, hence the interest in his link to Bermuda.

Bermuda?s Supreme Court ruling approving Ms Cox?s judgement seems likely to prove an interesting test to Mr. Coxon?s Free Market New Network boast of December 2004 about the ?most powerful wealth protection strategy of all ? a lawful offshore trust that makes lawsuit predators weep?.