Tax crime doesn’t pay — coverage of tax fraud, evasion, and financial crime prosecutions, and what they mean for the rest of us.
A little over a year ago, Bernie Madoff received a 150-year sentence (that’s more than most serial murderers get, folks) for his “extraordinarily evil” fraud. Nearly six months later, David Friehling, Madoff’s longtime accountant pleaded guilty to assisting Madoff with the fraud. Friehling, who is expected to receive over 100 years in prison for his…
Shortly after his conviction on tax evasion charges, Wesley Snipes declared that he would appeal on the grounds that the sentence was unreasonable. Snipes got his answer today. A federal court disagreed with his assessment, virtually guaranteeing that the actor will do time. Two years ago, Snipes was found guilty of failing to file tax…
So, I don’t say that on the blog very often (though my brothers would likely tell a different story from our years at home). But I’m sooo saying it now. When the IRS won its prominent battle with UBS, I said (as did many tax and finance bloggers) that a win would only lead to…
Rapper Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan has pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges. The plea follows Method Man’s October arrest on felony charges of evading New York personal income tax. Method Man, whose real name is Clifford Smith, was accused of failing to pay income and personal taxes to the state of New York…
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was formally indicted yesterday on 19 counts of fraud and tax evasion. A federal grand jury returned the indictment, which alleged that Kilpatrick used a tax-exempt charity, the Kilpatrick Civic Fund, as his own personal piggy bank. He is said to have spent more than $640,000 of the charity’s money…
Joe Francis, the in and out of trouble founder of the Girls Gone Wild series, has managed to tick off the Department of Justice yet again. This time, he has been accused of criminal contempt for disclosing court documents related to his income tax troubles. Those documents had been sealed by the court. Specifically at…
Ray Sansom is not having a good couple of years. After being elected Speaker of the Florida House in 2008, he was forced to take a temporary leave of absence from the position the following January after a scandal surfaced alleging that he had accepted a job in exchange for political favors. Just a few…
When I was in law school, we talked a lot about the purpose of jail… There are a bunch of different philosophies about why jailing a person is supposed to be a good idea though admittedly no consensus. Is it punishment for wrongs? A mechanism to isolate “bad” people? A way to get those who…
Remember the Jinwrights? I blogged last year that the popular pastors had been indicted on tax evasion charges. Their trial is now slated to begin but not without some unusual maneuverings. The prosecution hoped to have the Jinwrights thrown in jail just before their April 6 trial due to violation of the terms of their…
Disgraced former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, once hailed as a hero in New York, was finally sentenced after a lengthy investigation. Surprisingly, Kerik received more than the maximum sentence and will spend four years in federal prison as a result of a plea bargain. Kerik pleaded guilty to eight of the fifteen…