SACRAMENTO — A conviction for tax fraud against a former Willows tax attorney was returned Wednesday, stemming from a bench trial in October in U.S. District Court.

Orion Douglas Memmott, 73, was convicted of attempted tax evasion and subscribing to a false tax document, according to U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner.

Memmott stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors and clients and spent it on personal expenses, according to testimony during the trial.

One client was left destitute and homeless due to embezzlement from her medical trust, Wagner said in a press release.

Memmott concealed money and made false statements to investors, clients and the IRS, and hid real estate holdings and rental income from the IRS when it tried to collect more than $650,000 in unpaid taxes for tax years 1993-1999.

Memmott is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Kimberly J. Mueller Nov. 6. The maximum penalty for the two crimes is eight years in prison. </s> JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The owner of a Jacksonville tax-return preparation firm convicted of tax fraud was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

Adrian George, 41, was found guilty by a federal jury on April 11 of conspiring to commit wire fraud, conspiring to aid in the preparation and presentation of fraudulent tax returns to the IRS and five counts of aiding in the preparation and presentation of fraudulent tax returns, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.

He was indicted on March 30, 2017.

According to court documents, George owned and operated Professional Tax Service South, LLC, and taught his employees ways to include false information in tax returns to assure that his clients received large tax refunds.

Acting at his direction, George’s employees offered to prepare fraudulent or “boosted” returns for clients in exchange for cash payments from the proceeds of the illegitimate tax refunds, prosecutors said.

After being in business for less than two years, prosecutors said, George and his employees had prepared and filed 748 tax returns for clients -- all of which requested refunds.

Typically, only 62 percent of tax returns filed nationwide request refunds, according to testimony at trial.

Prosecutors said the tax returns prepared and filed by George and his employees requested a total of approximately $3.2 million in refunds. </s> FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European politicians have called for action to tackle dividend stripping after Reuters and other media revealed how large banks were involved in trading schemes that cost taxpayers billions of euros.

In Germany’s biggest post-war fraud investigation, prosecutors in Cologne are investigating banks involved in the trades, which secured illicit double tax rebates on dividend payouts.

Danish authorities are also seeking to recover hundreds of millions of euros in tax rebates they paid out after falling victim to a similar scheme and have filed dozens of lawsuits this year against individuals in the United States.

“It is large-scale greed, and we will pursue the culprits,” said Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

“That this is a problem across Europe makes me even more upset ... The answer ... is closer international cooperation.”

Reuters spoke to bankers, officials and people directly involved in the probe and reviewed thousands of pages of internal bank files, correspondence and legal papers obtained as part of a European media investigation called the “cum-ex files” coordinated by non-profit newsroom Correctiv.

These documents showed that prosecutors in Cologne opened a tax investigation into Santander in June. They believe its role in the scheme was to carry out trades. Other banks are being investigated as part of the wider probe.

Santander said it was “fully cooperating” with German authorities and conducting an internal investigation.

Jeppe Kofod, a Dutch member of the European Parliament’s committee on tax evasion and financial crime, called for a public hearing by lawmakers to quiz banks about the scheme.

“Several of the biggest European banks are involved,” Kofod told Reuters. “It is a European issue.”

Germany made three attempts to stamp out the practice by changing and clarifying the law in 2007 and 2009 before finally succeeding in 2012.

The discovery of the trades in Germany and Denmark has prompted other countries, including Austria and Belgium, to open their own investigations. They have discovered that they were also affected, albeit on a far smaller scale.

A spokeswoman for the Belgian finance ministry said it was investigating a similar fraud after it discovered illicit tax reclaims. It repaid 201 million euros before halting far larger reclaims, some as recent as 2017.

State prosecutors in Austria have also opened an investigation into similar trades, a spokeswoman said.

“The culprits tried to replicate the fraudulent scheme used in Germany in Austria,” she said, adding that a joint investigative team had been launched with prosecutors in Cologne. “The investigation is very advanced,” she said.

Norway also fell victim to the fraud in 2013 with a loss of 580,000 Norwegian krone ($71,270) according to the tax authorities. Norway was was able to stop 10 further attempts in 2015 in fraudulent claims of $4.3 million.

“After discovering these fraud attempts we introduced much tighter checks before paying refunds,” said Hans Christian Holte, director general of the Norwegian Tax Administration.

The circle of countries that theoretically could have fallen victim is even wider, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has monitored the situation.

Responding to the investigation, French Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin said on twitter: “If the frauds are confirmed, we will be ruthless.”

The scheme involved trading a company stock rapidly around a syndicate of banks, investors and hedge funds to create the impression of numerous owners - each entitled to a tax rebate.

“We need to look at our laws to make sure they can stop this kind of large-scale tax fraud,” said Tove Maria Ryding of the European Network on Debt and Development, which campaigns on tax issues. </s> MOBILE USERS, CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL VIDEO

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Trump administration says it is cracking down on scams that target elderly people.

Attorney General Sessions said Thursday that last month, cases were filed against 40 people for scamming about 1 million victims.

He also called for more awareness about Ponzi schemes, lottery scams, and people pretending to be with the IRS.

“We need to spread the word about this, so please, if you or someone you know was victimized by an elder fraud scheme, report it to the Federal Trade Commission,” Sessions said. “We will be following up on those reports.”

The attorney general said more than 200 people have been charged in elder fraud schemes.

The suspects are accused of stealing from more than 1 million Americans of more than $500 million.

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• GET KRON4 NEWS ON YOUR AMAZON ALEXA DEVICE </s> LOS ANGELES – A federal grand jury indictment filed late Wednesday charges high-profile attorney Michael Avenatti with a host of fraud and tax offenses that allege, among other things, that he stole millions of dollars from clients and millions of dollars of employment taxes that his coffee company should have paid to the Internal Revenue Service.

The 36-count indictment, which was returned by a grand jury in Santa Ana, outlines four areas of criminal conduct, all of which relate to the misappropriation and/or the illegal concealment of funds.

Avenatti, 48, who resides in Century City, was arrested in this case on March 25 pursuant to a criminal complaint that alleged the theft of money from one client and the use of bogus tax returns to obtain a series of loans. The indictment, which is now the operative charging document, alleges this conduct, but also significantly broadens the scope of the case.

The criminal charges in the indictment address four areas of wrongdoing: the embezzlement of millions of dollars that should have been paid to clients, the failure to file income tax returns and failure to pay the IRS millions of dollars in taxes, the submission of fraudulent loan applications that included tax returns never filed with the IRS, and the concealment of assets from the Bankruptcy Court.

“These four areas of criminal conduct alleged in the indictment are all linked to one another because money generated from one set of crimes appears in other sets – typically in the form of payments to lull victims and to prevent Mr. Avenatti’s financial house of cards from collapsing,” said United States Attorney Nick Hanna.

“The financial investigation conducted by the IRS details a man who allegedly failed to meet his obligations to the government, stole from his clients, and used his ill-gotten gains to support his racing team, the ownership of Tully’s coffee shops, and a private jet,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner with IRS Criminal Investigation in Los Angeles. “Individuals who intentionally thwart the IRS and fail to meet their tax obligations will be caught and they will be held accountable”

The Wire Fraud Charges

Avenatti faces 10 counts of wire fraud related to more than $12 million he received on behalf of clients as a result of settlements in lawsuits and other negotiations. While he was entitled to attorney’s fees for work done on behalf of clients, the indictment alleges that Avenatti stole millions of dollars from clients he represented in four matters.

In each of the four cases of embezzlement alleged in the indictment, Avenatti received money on behalf of clients into client trust accounts, misappropriated the money, and lied to the clients about receiving the money or, in one case, claimed that the money had already been sent to the client.

In the case of a victim called Client 1 in the indictment, Avenatti represented the man in a lawsuit against the County of Los Angeles that alleged, among other things, Client 1 became a paraplegic as a result of the county violating his constitutional rights. The county paid a $4 million settlement in January 2015, but within months Avenatti had drained the entire settlement payment from his law firms’ trust account and used portions of the settlement to finance his coffee business or pay personal expenses. Avenatti concealed the receipt of the settlement from Client 1 and instead gave him periodic “advances” of no more than $1,900 and paid the rent for his assisted living facility, according to the indictment.

Client 2 obtained a $3 million settlement in a matter, which included a payment of $2.75 million in early 2017. The indictment alleges that Avenatti took the bulk of this money – $2.5 million – and used it to purchase his portion of a jet, while falsely telling Client 2 that the settlement called for monthly payments over eight years. Avenatti made 11 monthly payments, making them appear to come from the individual who paid the settlement, but then Avenatti allegedly stopped paying Client 2.

Client 3 is the client-victim discussed in the criminal complaint who was to receive a $1.9 million settlement in an intellectual property dispute. Avenatti allegedly embezzled the first installment of $1.6 million in January 2018, in part by providing Client 3 with a bogus settlement agreement indicating that the payment was going to be made two months later. The indictment alleges that Avenatti used the money to pay expenses at his coffee business and to pay his own legal expenses.

Clients 4 and 5 divested shares in a company after Avenatti negotiated a “Common Stock Repurchase Agreement” for the sale of nearly $27.5 million worth of shares and then another sale of approximately $8.15 million worth of shares. When the first payment was made, Avenatti took his fees for the overall $35 million sale and sent the balance to Client 4. But when the second stock sale was finalized and the company sent nearly $8.15 million, Avenatti kept $4 million for himself and used this money to pay some of his law firm’s bankruptcy creditors, including the IRS; to provide funding for his various businesses; and to make lulling payments to Client 1 and Client 2. When Client 4 and Client 5 demanded their money, Avenatti falsely told them that the purloined $4 million already had been wired to them and provided them with a wire transfer confirmation document which actually documented the transfer of an earlier $4 million payment.

The Tax Fraud Charges

The indictment charges Avenatti with a total of 19 tax-related offenses. The indictment alleges that Avenatti has failed to file personal income tax returns since 2010, and that he failed to file various tax returns for his two law firms in which he held a controlling interest.

Some of the tax charges relate to Avenatti’s ownership of Global Baristas US LLC (GBUS), which operated Tully’s Coffee. Starting in late 2015 and continuing into 2017, GBUS failed to file employment tax returns and failed to pay approximately $3.2 million in federal payroll taxes, according to the indictment, which notes that this figure includes at least $2.3 million in “trust fund taxes” that GBUS had withheld from its employees’ paychecks. In 2016, the IRS initiated a collection action against GBUS, and, in June 2017, the IRS filed a federal tax lien against GBUS as part of its attempts to collect nearly $5 million in unpaid federal payroll taxes and penalties.

Further, Avenatti allegedly attempted to obstruct the IRS’s efforts to collect the taxes. The indictment alleges that he lied to an IRS revenue officer, opened a new bank account to receive funds related to credit card transactions at Tully’s coffee shops, and directed Tully’s employees to deposit cash receipts into a bank account belonging to a car racing outfit that Avenatti also owned. Some of the money that should have been used to pay GBUS’ tax debt was transferred to bank accounts associated with Avenatti’s law firms, and some of that money was used to make lulling payments to Clients 1 and 2.

The Bank Fraud Charges

Avenatti faces two counts of bank fraud stemming from an alleged scheme in which he submitted bogus financial information to obtain three loans totaling $4.1 million from The People’s Bank, a federally insured financial institution in Mississippi. As previously alleged in the criminal complaint, Avenatti submitted personal tax returns that had never been filed with the IRS, but the indictment further alleges that he submitted documents to the bank that overstated the resources of the Eagan Avenatti law firm. For example, the indictment accuses Avenatti of submitting a balance sheet for the law firm stating that the law firm, on March 10, 2014, had $508,200 in its operating account, when in fact the account held slightly more than $43,000. Avenatti also allegedly submitted to the bank a partnership tax return for Eagan Avenatti for 2012 that was different from the return actually submitted to the IRS in that the return provided to the bank reported close to $8 million in additional business income.

The Bankruptcy Fraud Charges

Avenatti faces four bankruptcy fraud charges for allegedly making false statements in relation to a bankruptcy case involving Eagan Avenatti. As the managing partner of the firm, Avenatti agreed in the bankruptcy proceeding to abide by certain guidelines and requirements, including filing monthly operating reports that detailed all of the firm’s financial information. Three of the bankruptcy fraud charges allege that Avenatti submitted, under penalty of perjury, monthly operating reports that failed to report all of the firm’s accounts receivable. Additionally, Avenatti is charged with falsely testifying under oath during a June 2017 bankruptcy hearing by denying the firm had received any fees related to a lawsuit when Eagan Avenatti had actually received more than $1.3 million, which included attorney’s fees in relation to that case.

The indictment specifically charges Avenatti with 10 counts of wire fraud related to the theft of money that should have been paid to clients, eight counts of willful failure to collect and pay over taxes withheld from GBUS employee, one count of endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue Code, four misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file his personal tax returns for the years 2014 through 2017, three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file Eagan Avenatti’s tax returns for the years 2015 through 2017, three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file tax returns for Avenatti & Associates for the years 2015 through 2017, two counts of bank fraud related to the loans received from The People’s Bank, one count of aggravated identity theft for misusing the name of a tax preparer in relation to the bank fraud scheme, three counts of making false declarations in relation to a bankruptcy, and one count of giving false testimony under oath in Bankruptcy Court.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

If he were to be convicted of the charges alleged in the indictment, Avenatti would face a statutory maximum sentence of 333 years in federal prison, plus an additional two-year mandatory consecutive sentence for the aggravated identity theft charge.

Avenatti, who is free on a $300,000 bond, is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on April 29 in United States District Court in Santa Ana.

The ongoing investigation into Avenatti is being conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation, which has received assistance from the Newport Beach Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Julian L. André of the Major Frauds Section and Brett A. Sagel of the Santa Ana Branch Office.

In a related action on Wednesday, federal authorities seized the Honda jet that was purchased, in part, with money Avenatti allegedly stole from Client 2. That portion of the case is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney Steven R. Welk, Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Section.

Avenatti Indictment </s> Spain’s Princess Cristina has been acquitted of tax fraud after becoming the first member of the country’s royal family to have been tried for a criminal offence.

The three judges delivered their verdict in courtroom in Palma de Mallorca shortly after midday on Friday, finding the 51-year-old not-guilty on two counts of being an accomplice to tax fraud.

Princess Cristina’s husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, was convicted of several counts of corruption and tax fraud and was sentenced to a total of six years and three months in prison.

The princess’s chief legal adviser, Miquel Roca, told reporters that the King of Spain’s sister was “satisfied that her innocence had been recognised [but] upset as she remains convinced of her husband’s innocence”.

Princess Cristina and Mr Urdangarin have been living in Switzerland with their four children since 2013, the year in which a judge investigating the company half-owned by the princess’s husband also accused her of helping to divert public money into their private accounts. </s> Attorney Michael Avenatti has been charged in a 36-count federal indictment alleging he stole millions of dollars from clients, did not pay his taxes, committed bank fraud and lied in bankruptcy proceedings.

Avenatti, 48, was indicted late Wednesday by a Southern California grand jury on a raft of additional charges following his arrest last month in New York on two related counts and for allegedly trying to shake down Nike for up to $25 million.

The attorney best known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against President Donald Trump said Thursday on Twitter that he will plead not guilty to the California charges.

"I look forward to the entire truth being known as opposed to a one-sided version meant to sideline me," he wrote.

The new charges do not include the New York extortion case alleging Avenatti demanded millions to stay quiet about claims he planned to reveal about Nike paying high school players. Avenatti has said he expects to be cleared in that case.

The 61-page Southern California indictment alleges Avenatti embezzled from a paraplegic man and four other clients and deceived them by shuffling money between accounts to pay off small portions of what they were due to lull them into thinking they were getting paid.

Avenatti, 48, is also charged with not paying personal income taxes, not paying taxes for his various businesses, including two law firms, and pocketing payroll taxes from the Tully's Coffee chain that he owned, the indictment said.

Between September 2015 and January 2018, Global Baristas US, the company that operated Tully's, failed to pay the Internal Revenue Service $3.2 million in payroll taxes, including nearly $2.4 million withheld from employees, the indictment said.

When the IRS put tax levies on coffee company bank accounts to collect more than $5 million, Avenatti had Tully's employees deposit cash receipts in a little-known account, the indictment said.

Avenatti was also charged with submitting fraudulent tax returns to get more than $4 million in loans from The Peoples Bank in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2014. The tax returns he presented to the bank were never filed to the IRS, prosecutors have said.

The charges are the latest major blow to a career that took off last year when Avenatti represented Daniels in her lawsuit to break a confidentiality agreement with Trump to stay mum about an affair they allegedly had.

Avenatti became one of Trump's leading adversaries, attacking him on cable news programs and Twitter. At one point, Avenatti even considered challenging Trump in 2020.

But back home, his business practices had come under scrutiny from the IRS and a former law partner who was owed $14 million by Avenatti and the Eagan Avenatti firm, which filed for bankruptcy.

The indictment said Avenatti made false statements in bankruptcy proceedings by submitting forms under penalty of perjury that under reported income his firm received.

The most glaring example of deception and fraud was described in the indictment as scheming Avenatti allegedly did to deprive clients of money they were due from legal settlements or sales of stock and the actions he took to cover his tracks.

In a case involving one client, Avenatti allegedly funneled a $2.75 million settlement into his bank accounts and spent $2.5 million on a private airplane, the indictment said.

Although Avenatti was due a portion of settlement funds for his work, the charges said he paid only a fraction of the money clients were due in some cases and strung them along while they waited to be paid. Avenatti allegedly drained a $4 million settlement he negotiated in 2015 on behalf of Geoffrey Johnson, who was paralyzed after trying to kill himself in the Los Angeles County jail, the indictment said. Johnson was referred to as "Client 1" in the indictment, but was named at a recent court hearing involving the money Avenatti was ordered to pay his former partner. Until last month, Avenatti had only provided $124,000 over 69 payments to Johnson, the indictment said. Two years after the settlement was reached, Avenatti allegedly helped Johnson find a real estate agent to buy a house. But when Johnson was in escrow to purchase the property, Avenatti falsely said he had not received the settlement funds, the indictment said. In November, when the U.S. Social Security Administration requested information to determine if Johnson should continue to receive disability benefits, Avenatti said he would respond, but didn't because he knew it could lead to the discovery of his embezzlement, the indictment said. The failure to respond led to Johnson's disability benefits being cut off in February. After Avenatti was questioned about the alleged embezzlement during a judgment-debtor examination in federal court March 22, the indictment said he fabricated a defense for himself. Avenatti had Johnson sign a document a day or two later saying he was satisfied with his representation, which the lawyer told him was necessary to get the settlement that had in fact been paid four years earlier, the indictment said. When asked by The Associated Press last month about Johnson's case, Avenatti said his client approved all transactions and accounting and had been kept in the loop. "He has repeatedly thanked me for my dedication to his case and the ethics I have employed," Avenatti wrote in an email response. </s> Posing as IRS agents, the telecallers duped many Americans into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’

The Thane police have busted a racket in which telecallers were calling up American citizens posing as agents of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and duping them into paying ‘fines’ for ‘tax irregularities’. The police have arrested 70 accused in the case, while 700 are still under the scanner.

According to police officials, acting on a tip-off, a team of 40 officers and 120 constables conducted raids on three buildings on Mira Road, from which the racket was allegedly being run.

“Telephonic conversations via Voice Over Internet Protocol [VOIP] facility were being made when we raided the three places and we also found recordings of calls made to U.S. citizens in these spaces, which were being run like call centres.”

“A total of 772 people were taken into custody for inquiries,” said Thane Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.

Explaining the modus operandi of the accused, Mr. Singh said the accused obtained contact details of U.S. citizens in bulk from gangs that illegally sell such information. “The callers would call the targets and claim to be from the IRS. They would then tell the targets that some irregularities had been detected in their tax payments, that they had become defaulters, that they would be booked and would face imprisonment for at least three months. Once a target believed them, the callers would start talking about payment of fines. After an amount agreeable to both parties was reached at, the targets would be asked to pay via international gift cards or iTunes,” Mr. Singh said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Parag Manere added, “Eight out of ten times, the targets would not believe the callers and hang up. But even if only a handful of people paid the ‘fines’ every day, the accused were still making thousands of dollars from each target.”

According to inquiries so far, the racket has been active for around a year, and the accused are believed to have cheated thousands of U.S. citizens to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees. The police are still trying to get an estimate of the amount of money that the accused have made till date.

After preliminary inquiries, the police identified 70 of the detained suspects who were heading the racket and placed them under arrest, while the rest are still being questioned. The accused have been booked under the Indian Penal Code, the Information Technology Act and the Indian Telegraph Act, and the police have seized hard drives and computers, which will now be examined to get a more accurate sense of the extent of the racket.

Officials said a large number of other suspects were young men and women who were trained in American accent and legal terms before being put to work. The police have also launched a separate investigation into the source of the contact details of the targets. </s> The House’s tax-writing committee filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service for access to President Donald Trump’s tax returns, reported. The lawsuit, filed by the the House Ways and Means Committee in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to enforce a statute that gives Congress access to anyone’s tax returns. The lawsuit comes two months after the Democrat-led panel subpoenaed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS chief Charles Rettig to submit Trump’s personal and business returns for the last six years. The officials defied those May subpoenas, however, arguing the request to disclose Trump’s financial documents had no legitimate legislative purpose.

“In refusing to comply with the statute, Defendants have mounted an extraordinary attack on the authority of Congress to obtain information needed to conduct oversight of Treasury, the IRS, and the tax laws on behalf of the American people who participate in the Nation’s voluntary tax system,” the complaint states. The lawsuit also notes the committee is investigating whether the IRS has been enforcing its “self-imposed policy of annually auditing the returns of sitting presidents.” “Indeed, President Trump himself has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the process by which the IRS audits his tax returns, complaining that his returns are under ‘continuous audit’ and that the IRS’s policy of annually auditing Presidential returns is ‘extremely unfair,’” the complaint states.
A tax fraud scheme discovered in 2017.