Warrant issued for Great Falls gun shop owner whose raid by the IRS drew national attention

Tommy Michael VanHoose, who became a conservative media darling after the IRS raided his Great Falls gun store in 2023, skipped his October sentencing hearing in federal court for felony tax fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris issued a warrant for VanHoose’s arrest on Oct. 8. A day later, VanHoose’s defense attorneys filed the paperwork to remove themselves as his counsel.

According to documents in his fraud case, VanHoose had been going through treatments for melanoma, and the sentencing hearing had been delayed several times for health reasons. But in recent court documents, his attorneys said that he “successfully battled” the cancer and that he was healthy enough to proceed with court hearings.

Then on Oct. 14, a man who said he was negotiating to buy VanHoose’s firearms business submitted a victim impact letter to the court. The prospective buyer said that when he asked for profit-and-loss statements earlier this year, VanHoose provided statements reflecting the same underreported income that led to his conviction for tax fraud.

“Mr. VanHoose used the same falsified financial records he pled guilty to falsifying — while his criminal case was before this court and while sentencing was being continued — to attempt to induce me to purchase his property at an inflated value derived from false income figures,” the prospective buyer, David Bissell, wrote in his letter to the federal court.

Attempts to reach VanHoose were unsuccessful. His business south of downtown Great Falls appears closed. He hasn’t appeared on the county jail roster as of Wednesday.

VanHoose had been trying to sell his business, Highwood Creek Outfitters, back in 2023 when an undercover IRS agent posed as a potential buyer. Court documents said that VanHoose’s real estate agent told the undercover agent about “off the books” income that was “substantial.”

VanHoose himself later gave the undercover agent a tour of the business in May 2023 and repeatedly said that he didn’t report 20% of his gross receipts to the IRS, according to court documents. The IRS investigation eventually found that he skimmed around $450,000 for himself and underreported his income by $1.4 million over five years, resulting in an unpaid tax liability of $442,254.

It was the June 2023 raid of the gun store that brought national attention to VanHoose. IRS agents seized transaction forms required by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The forms included purchase prices, and investigators used them to compare VanHoose’s reported income to the IRS. When the undercover agent asked VanHoose about the reporting discrepancy between the IRS and ATF, VanHoose responded, “It’s easy. They don’t know what I’m paying for or I’m getting in income off these guns,” according to the indictment.

But those forms also contained customer information, and politicians jumped on the story as perceived federal overreach.

Montana U.S. Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester raised concerns about the seizure of customer information. Congressman Matt Rosendale took the rhetoric further, visiting the shop and falsely claiming that the seized documents contained no financial information.

VanHoose also leaned into the spotlight and repeatedly claimed he was the target of politically motivated attacks on firearms enthusiasts. He raised more than $25,000 and hosted a community rally in support of Second Amendment rights. In a primetime interview with Fox News, VanHoose embraced host Jesse Watters’ suggestion that the Biden administration was out to get gun owners.

“If they can’t put me out of business, because I didn’t do anything wrong, they can sure as heck try and bankrupt me,” VanHoose said.

Even upon his federal indictment in the summer of 2024, VanHoose told Montana Free Press that he was being “politically targeted.”

Prosecutors charged VanHoose with five counts of submitting false tax returns, covering five years of fraudulent filings. After several delays, VanHoose reached a plea agreement in October 2025 and pleaded guilty to just one count related to the 2018 tax filing. The charge has a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

Prior to sentencing, federal prosecutors noted the narrative VanHoose espoused about politically motivated attacks following the raid.

“This narrative understandably created an immediate sense of concern that factions of the United States government were somehow targeting law-abiding gun owners in Montana,” assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey K. Starnes wrote in a sentencing memo. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In court filings, VanHoose’s attorneys requested that he be sentenced to probation and described the crime in vague terms.

“He is so disappointed in himself for allowing the payment of taxes and the desire to stay afloat to rise above the one thing he had worked for his entire life – his integrity,” his attorneys wrote.

The attorneys suggested that he had to sell his business in the wake of his conviction while facing restitution payments, even though the IRS investigation in 2023 started in response to VanHoose listing his business for sale.

VanHoose’s attorneys also wrote in the Sept. 28 memo that he planned to come to the October sentencing hearing with a $165,000 check toward his $250,000 fine after selling his business. That’s where David Bissell enters the story.

Bissell runs a shooting sports store called Cascade Ballistics in the town of Cascade. In his letter to the court, Bissell said he began negotiations to purchase VanHoose’s business in April 2026, while VanHoose’s sentencing was still pending.

VanHoose sent five years of profit-and-loss statements to Bissell as part of due diligence. Three years of those statements overlapped with VanHoose’s fraud charges, and the sales income he shared with Bissell is similar to the underreported income that prosecutors explained in the 2024 indictment.

Bissell wrote in his letter that he felt this should be noted in sentencing proceedings.

“A man who falsified tax records to defraud a prospective buyer while simultaneously awaiting sentencing for falsifying tax records has demonstrated no remorse whatsoever,” he wrote.

Bissell didn’t return calls from MTFP this week. He wrote in his letter that he notified the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That office didn’t respond to MTFP’s request for comment.

After several delays, the federal prosecutor and VanHoose agreed to hold a sentencing hearing Oct. 8. VanHoose’s attorney was present; VanHoose was not. The judge issued an arrest warrant later that afternoon.

The next day, VanHoose’s attorneys requested to withdraw from the case. They cited court professional conduct rules, including one that allows an attorney to terminate representation if “the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant or with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.”

VanHoose’s whereabouts are unknown. Court documents noted that he’s dealing with skin wounds as a result of his melanoma treatments.