Just when you thought you could spirit away your wealth to Central America, the IRS has an announcement to make. One of many so you better listen carefully.
The Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced this week that a federal grand jury in Anchorage, Alaska, returned a superseding indictment yesterday charging Michael D. Brandner, an Anchorage physician specializing in plastic surgery, on three counts of tax evasion. Brandner has also been charged with seven counts of wire fraud in an indictment returned in September 2013.
According to the superseding indictment, Brandner engaged in various activities to evade his taxes for 2008, 2009 and 2010, including making false and misleading statement to IRS special agents and filing false tax returns for each of the three years. In the three false returns, Brandner failed to report the existence of financial accounts in Panama and Costa Rica over which he had signature authority, and also failed to report foreign interest income of more than $9,000 for 2008, more than $150,000 for 2009, and more than $150,000 for 2010. The indictment also alleges that Brandner attempted to evade more than $600,000 in federal income taxes over the three years.
According to court documents, Brandner engaged in a scheme to hide and conceal millions of dollars of assets from the Alaska courts and from his wife of 28 years who was divorcing him. Shortly after the divorce was filed, Brandner left Alaska and drove to Central America after converting assets into five cashier’s checks worth over $3,000,000.
An indictment is merely an allegation and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. If convicted, Brandner faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison for each of the three tax evasion charges and a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each of the seven wire fraud charges.
The case was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation and by Homeland Security Investigations and is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Ignacio Perez de la Cruz of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder for the District of Alaska.
It’s obvious this fellow’s goal to hide money from his ex-wife’s lawyer, and to do so he had to hide it from the IRS too.
Since divorce laws are so biased against men, it’s perfectly rational for the guy to hide money to help balance the scales which are so imbalanced against him.
The ex-wife didn’t get educated, do all the difficult things, invest money, and suffer stress related to her ex-husband’s business.
Yet in a divorce he has to give away at least 50%, plus alimony. The ex-wife benefited from his earnings for 28 years by living in a nice house, gifts, vacations, etc. Giving her an equal share of everything plus more is grossly unfair, so the fellow just tried to balance the scales and got caught.
Putting him in jail will accomplish nothing useful and would actually hurt the general public by removing a skilled doctor from the system. Putting him in jail will cost tax-payers a lot of money to keep him jailed and not earning any taxable income.
A fine instead of jail time would serve the public much better and also deter others from trying to hide money.