Man with a Knife at Today Show has IRS Problems

Move over Larry Connors! 

The man who slashed his wrists in front of a horrified crowd watching the “Today” show outside Rockefeller Center Thursday said he committed this “desperate act” to get back at the IRS and others who robbed him.

“I had to do something desperate to fight the corruption, fight the IRS,” Pak Chong Mar told a Daily News reporter as he lay on a hospital gurney at Bellevue Hospital. “They are so powerful.”

Bandages on his right hand and left wrist, blood spattered on his dark jeans, the Queens man gave a rambling statement about how he was done wrong just a couple of hours after the midtown mayhem. While Pak spoke, his wife and grown daughter sat silently nearby.

“I need people to help me fight for justice,” Pak said. “If I don’t do something drastic, sooner or later these guys are going to kill me anyway. I couldn’t even pay rent this month.”

Pak, 76, said he emigrated from China to New York in 1948 and made a million dollars buying stocks with money made from running a grocery store and working as a waiter. He claimed TD Ameritrade and Scottrade helped the IRS plunder his funds and he had proof back at his apartment.

“I should be living well,” he said. “I had over a million dollars before. They’re making my life miserable.”

Pak’s daughter, who declined to give her name, shook her head sadly.

“It’s sad,” she said. “We’re just trying to figure things out.”

Pak pleaded with the reporter for help and promised him a $50,000 cut if he got his money back. But when asked about the three fingers missing from his left hand, Pak abruptly said, “That’s a long story.”

According to police, back in August 1995, Pak used used a meat cleaver to methodically chop off the pinky, ring finger and middle finger of his left hand — then he tossed each digit into the crowd gathered for the Hong Kong Dragon Board Festival in Flushing, Queens.

Pak was carrying letters protesting his eviction from his Brooklyn apartment at the time.

When Pak arrived at NBC headquarters shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday, he was wearing a grubby gray T-shirt and a white baseball cap — and carrying another sheaf of documents.

“The IRS ruined my life!” he hollered, witnesses said. “I’m not a freeloader!”

H/T NY Daily News