Category Archives: Tax Evasion
Federal Grand Jury Indicts Ex-Chairman of Public Health Trust on Grounds of Tax Evasion, Fraud
While he campaigned for an $830 million bond referendum paid for by Miami-Dade taxpayers in 2013, the then-board chairman of Jackson Health System, the county’s public hospital network, refused to pay personal income taxes and then dodged the IRS’s collection efforts, a Miami grand jury said in a criminal indictment unsealed last week. Darryl… Read More »
Tax Reform Impacts Resolutions of False Claims Act Enforcement Actions
The tax reform law passed in December 2017 establishes requirements and conditions for the tax deductible treatment of payments made to the government to resolve enforcement actions. See 26 U.S.C. § 162(f) (2018); see also Pub. L. No. 115-97, § 13306, H.R. 1 (Dec. 22, 2017). The new provisions hold important implications for defendants… Read More »
US Supreme Court Puts the Brakes on IRS Obstruction Prosecutions
Paying a waiter or babysitter in cash could have constituted a felony tax obstruction offense under the government’s expansive interpretation of the obstruction statutes. The March 21 ruling by the US Supreme Court places a limit to that interpretation, requiring the government to provide fair warning on the felony line. In a 7-2 decision… Read More »
Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca Raided by Organized Crime Prosecutors
PANAMA CITY — Organized crime prosecutors raided the offices of the Mossack Fonseca law firm Tuesday looking for evidence of money laundering and financing terrorism following a leak of documents about tax havens it set up for wealthy international clients. Soon after news reports based on a trove of documents from the firm began… Read More »
Panama Papers: Secret offshores trace back to Brickell condo featured on ‘Miami Vice’
To set up secret offshore companies, members of Latin America’s elite turn to a condo at a Brickell high-rise once featured on Miami Vice. Olga Santini, the Miami representative for Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, works out of a two-bedroom unit at the Palace, a waterfront tower on Brickell Avenue. Mossack Fonseca specializes in setting… Read More »
Secret Shell Game: A global investigation of offshore companies
The Miami Herald spent months investigating how people accused of wrongdoing abroad used offshore shell companies to buy South Florida real estate. “Secret Shell Game” was based on an analysis of 11.5 million secret files from inside Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. For decades, the world’s wealthiest and most politically connected people have asked… Read More »
Italian fugitive used Miami firms to set up offshore
When two Miami firms set up an offshore company for Giuseppe Donaldo Nicosia in 2011, they didn’t know the Italian businessman would be accused of masterminding a $48 million tax fraud three years later. Or that one of his alleged partners in the scheme, an Italian senator and ally of former premier Silvio Berlusconi,… Read More »
Miami Beach’s stoner gun-runner drama — now a Hollywood movie —
The tale of how three young guys from Miami Beach won hundreds of millions in weapons contracts from the Pentagon has been turned into a Rolling Stone article, a book and a soon-to-appear Hollywood movie called War Dogs. Efraim Diveroli, David Packouz and Alexander Podrizki sold aging weapons and ammunition originally from China and… Read More »
Panama Papers: Miami Beach fraudsters hid loot in offshore companies
Among the many questionable customers of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were a Miami Beach father and son convicted of a $49 million tax fraud in 2011. Mauricio Cohen Assor, 82, and Leon Cohen-Levy, 51, hid a Miami Beach mansion, a Fisher Island condo, bank accounts, luxury cars and even a helicopter from the… Read More »
Investigation Unveils Corrupt Buyers in Miami’s ‘Secret Shell Game’
A look at the eye-opening report from the Miami Herald The Miami Herald, in conjunction with 100 global news partners, published a new series based on 11.5 million secret files leaked from inside Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, exposing the “Secret Shell Game” in South Florida’s luxury real-estate world.The year-long investigation exposed many of… Read More »
