U.S. Attorney’s Office Agrees Not to Charge Prominent Attorney with Criminal Tax Crimes

Our client, a prominent attorney in his city, had been the target of a very aggressive IRS criminal tax investigation for a number of years, and hired us after the investigation had been completed, IRS supervisors and attorneys had approved the case for prosecution, and the matter had been forwarded to the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division in Washington, DC with recommendation that our client be charged with and prosecuted for multiple counts of tax evasion.

OUR APPROACH

We assembled a team that included two of the very best former IRS Special Agents in our professional network and a CPA who specialized in accounting procedures for professional practices and we aggressively investigated the case. Over a ninety day period, the professionals involved in the case turned away a number of potential new clients in order to devote their full time and effort to the case, as the task at hand was to complete in three months, an investigation that a team of IRS agents took nearly three years to complete.

As we worked our investigation, we discovered a number of very significant weaknesses in the government’s case, including serious witness credibility issues. As we learned about our client’s accounting processes and procedures, it became clear that the government would have difficulty proving criminal intent.

Upon completion of our investigation, we flew to Washington, DC, made a full presentation to decision makers at the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and urged in the strongest possible terms that our client should not be criminally charged. Unfortunately, only a few weeks later, we were advised that Tax Division had approved the case for prosecution and forwarded the file to the local U.S. Attorney’s office with a mandate that our client be charged with four counts of tax evasion.

It took us a few days to learn which Assistant U.S. Attorney was assigned to the case, but when we did, we made one last ditch effort to keep our client from being criminally charged. We presented to the Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned, showed him the weaknesses in the government’s case, walked him through the strengths in our case, reminded him that he would largely take the blame for an acquittal and requested that he decline to criminally prosecute our client.

THE RESULT

The U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to prosecute our client.