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Tax Fraud

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to tax fraud and underpayment. You may also be interested in the following pages:

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December 13, 2021

Following his conviction at trial on tax fraud charges, John Barry Jr. was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution.  According to evidence at trial, Barry promoted a “mortgage recovery” tax scheme, telling clients that they could extinguish mortgage debts by filing false forms with the IRS claiming that a large amount of taxes had been withheld.  These false withholding claims caused the IRS to issue more than $4 million in refunds to Barry’s clients; Barry typically charged each client a fee of between 20% to 35% of the refund obtained.  DOJ

The New ENABLERS Act May Be a Backdoor Way to Expand the Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Program

Posted  10/14/21
By Sarah “Poppy” Alexander
Hundred dollars bills pinned to clothes line
In The Hill this week, I argue that the newly proposed ENABLERS Act is a lot more powerful than even its authors seem to realize.  The proposed law would effectively expand the Bank Secrecy Act to apply the same reporting requirements currently imposed on banks to all sorts of actors who enable (get it?) money laundering: lawyers, investment advisers, accountants, art dealers, public relations firms, and the like. ...

Pandora Papers Show the Value of Financial Transparency, the Critical Role of Whistleblowers – and the Need for Additional Regulation

Posted  10/8/21
This week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its partners began publicly reporting on the “Pandora Papers,” a trove of millions of leaked documents from firms around the world that help customers set up “offshore” accounts and shell companies designed to conceal financial truths.  The leaked documents, and the extensive reporting on the documents, sheds light on the murky world of...

August 27, 2021

Prithviraj “Roger” Bhikha, a former Senior Director of Global Supplier Management at Cisco Systems, Inc. was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $2.5 million to the IRS following his guilty plea on charges arising from his receipt of kickbacks from Cisco vendors, his creation of a front company that billed $10 million in services to Cisco while concealing his role, and his failure to report more than $9 million in income to the IRS.  Bhikha was also ordered to pay $1.15 million to Cisco, and forfeited to pieces of real estate in San Francisco.  IRS; USAO ND Cal

August 6, 2021

Chandra Yarlagadda, who owned and operated biodiesel supplier Alpha Bioenergy LLC, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $3.3 million following his guilty plea to income tax evasion charges.  Yarlagadda, who reported income and expenses associated with Alpha Bioenergy on Schedules C attached to his personal income tax returns, admitted that over the course of three years he reported that the company incurred expenses totaling more than $14.2 million for the purchase and retirement of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) used by the EPA, when, in fact, he had incurred only $80,000 in RIN expenses during those years.  Without the inflated deduction claims, Yarlagadda would have owed an additional $2.3 million in federal income taxes.  DOJ

August 3, 2021

Bermuda bank Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited will pay $5.6 million and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve charges that between 2001 and 2013 it assisted U.S.-taxpayer clients in opening and maintaining undeclared foreign bank accounts.  The bank has provided the government with approximately 386 unredacted client files.  USAO SDNY; IRS

July 13, 2021

Joel Jerome Tucker, the principal in payday loan business eData Solutions, LLC and related entities, was ordered to pay $8.1 million in restitution to the IRS and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison following his conviction on charges related to his fraudulent sale of non-existent payday loan portfolios and the failure by him and his companies to file federal income tax returns or pay taxes.  Tucker used nominee bank accounts to conceal income and assets and owed taxes, penalties, and interest of more than $12 million.  In addition, in 2020, Tucker fraudulently obtained a $20,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan.  USAO WD MO

What Maryland can Learn from the IRS on the State’s New Tax Program: Ari Yampolsky and Michael Ronickher in the Washington Post

Posted  07/13/21
Headshots of whistleblower attorneys Michael Ronickher and Ari Yampolsky
Opening with the warning “tax cheats beware,” Constantine Cannon whistleblower attorneys Ari Yampolsky and Michael Ronickher published an opinion piece in the Washington Post detailing the provisions of Maryland’s new tax whistleblower reward program, which covers state and county tax fraud and underpayments. While New York has long allowed whistleblowers to use its state False Claims Act to bring tax claims,...

May 14, 2021

Dusko Bruer, who owned and operated an agricultural machinery company, was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $2.8 million in restitution following his conviction on tax evasion charges.  Between 2003 and 2009, Bruer's company did not file or pay either corporate or employment taxes.  Bruer was not paid a salary; instead, he used funds from corporate bank accounts for personal expenses.  Bruer also failed to report foreign bank accounts that he owned and controlled, and to which he transferred millions of dollars between at last 2006 and 2015.   DOJ

May 14, 2021

Swiss insurance company Swiss Life Holding AG and related entities will pay $77 million and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement admitting that they conspired with U.S. taxpayers to  conceal more than $1.452 billion in assets and income in offshore insurance policies and related policy investment accounts.  From 2005 to 2014, Swiss Life maintained approximately 1,608 Private Placement Life Insurance policies known as “insurance wrappers,” with associated policy investment accounts with Swiss Life entities identified as the owner, allowing U.S. taxpayers to hide undeclared assets and income and evade taxes.  Beginning in 2008, Swiss Life specifically marketed such policies to taxpayers withdrawing assets from UBS and other Swiss banks in response to offshore tax enforcement efforts aimed at those bank.  DOJ; USAO SDNY
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