Category Archives: Tax Evasion

United States’ government continues to track down tax evaders with offshore accounts under FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), which not only requires individuals to report their financial accounts held outside of the United States, but also compels foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their American clients. Ty Warner, […]

Eight-time Grammy-award winning singer Lauryn Hill was set to be sentenced earlier this week for failing to pay hundreds of thousands of owed back taxes but her sentencing has been postponed for two weeks in order to pay restitution. Hill was charged with failing to file three years’ worth of tax returns and owes $504,000 […]

Mary Estelle Curran, 79, pleaded guilty on January 8, 2013 to using foreign bank accounts to hide more than $42 million from the IRS. This is one of the largest cases in the continuing U.S. crackdown on offshore tax evasion. Federal authorities with the Justice Department said Curran failed to declare income from 2001-2007 when […]

Recently The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals made a controversial decision regarding willfulness as it applies to FBAR obligations. United States v. Williams, No. 10-2230 (4th Cir. July 20, 2012). This ruling may add risk to opting out of the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program or disclosing foreign bank accounts late without entering into the Offshore […]

The IRS continues to pursue undisclosed offshore bank accounts aggressively. Although the IRS started with taxpayers hiding money with UBS in Switzerland as outlined below, they have quickly moved to other Swiss banks. UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) Clients Jan. 30, 2012 — Stephen M. Kerr, Michael Quiel and Christopher M. Rusch were charged in […]

Yesterday, a federal grand jury in San Jose, California, indicted Ashvin Desai of San Jose on three counts of tax evasion on $1.3 million in unreported interest income, two counts of willfully aiding the preparation of materially false tax returns and three counts of failing to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBARs), […]