</s>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>ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)  A criminal scheme worthy of Lex Luthor unraveled with the help of Supergirl, authorities said: An international identity-theft ring so complex, prosecutors say that even with the arrest of four people Thursday they have only just begun to uncover its full extent.

The schemes, which allegedly roped in hundreds of victims and millions of dollars, relied in part on scouring the internet for mugshot-type photos that could plausibly be plugged onto fake IDs that could be used in credit applications, charges and financial transactions, according to investigators who tracked the ring for two years.

That”s where actress Laura Vandervoort, who played Supergirl on TV, comes in. On one fake passport, the suspects used a photo of Vandervoort, said Joshua Stueve, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is prosecuting the case. Vandervoort”s picture was a mugshot-style photo used as a prop when she played the role of Lisa on the sci-fi show V.

While combing through evidence in the early stages of the case, one agent instantly recognized her picture as Supergirl from another sci-fi show, Smallville. The discovery helped agents realize the extent to which the ring had gone to support its scheme.

As the investigation continued, prosecutors found increasingly elaborate schemes, according to court records: In one instance, they created a fake company called the Deutche Group. Job advertisements for Deutche Group were placed on Craigslist, and unwitting applicants would supply personal data like Social Security numbers on their applications that would then be used to further the scheme, according to court records.

The ring created fake travel companies called triparenaonline and flycheap.com, which would offer discount air and hotel reservations, according to FBI affidavits. Unsuspecting customers would pay for the travel, but the schemers would keep the money, authorities said. Then, to preserve the perception the transaction was legitimate, the ring would book customers” travel using stolen credit cards.

Occasionally a traveler would get lucky and take their trip without incident. Frequently, though, customers would arrive at the airport to find the tickets canceled because the fraud had been discovered. In some cases, travelers were stranded when they were able to arrive at their destination only to find their return flights canceled.

The ring had extensive contacts in India, including an insider at an American Express call center who supplied stolen card numbers, according to court documents.

Authorities arrested four people Thursday, including two from northern Virginia: Amit Chaudhry, 44, of Ashburn and Jacqueline Green-Morris, 40, of Woodbridge. Two others were arrested in Georgia.

Chaudhry  who headed up an Ashburn Company called The Knowledge Center, which prosecutors believe is part of the fraud  is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, and Green-Morris is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Both are being held pending detention hearings scheduled for Monday. Neither had attorneys.

Chaudhry, in particular, seemed caught off guard by his arrest Thursday, telling a magistrate at his initial appearance in federal court in Alexandria that he didn”t understand the charges against him and denying he had any significant ties to India.

Prosecutors say their investigation is ongoing, and they are hoping that victims who came into contact with Chaudhry, The Knowledge Center, the Deutche Group or any of his other business dealings will come forward to help them get a handle on the scope of the scheme. Those who believe they may have been a victim can file a complaint at ic3.gov, and should use the keyword “CCTRAVELVICTIM” in their description of the complaint, Stueve said.</s>The prime minister’s decision to announce the Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme is indeed a welcome step as it can help those who don’t have a house of their own. The newly-elected government is lauded for launching this scheme which will provide maximum benefit to the underprivileged.

The PTI government should maintain transparency and fairness so that people without shelter can get maximum benefits from this housing scheme. In addition, the process of this scheme should be straightforward because many people may face difficulty while filling out forms or going through complex procedures.</s>Few issues stir up the right-wing base like anchor babies, universal healthcare, and voter fraud. While newborns and public health seem like curious targets for political attacks, even card-carrying pinkos would agree that protecting our electoral system is of paramount importance.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced four arrests related to an ongoing investigation into Tarrant County voter fraud. In late 2016, Aaron Harris, executive director of the conservative watchdog group Direct Action Texas, said that he had uncovered evidence of mail-in ballot fraud. The voting option is offered to people who are disabled, absentee (which usually means living overseas), or over 65. Harris said politicians working primarily on the North Side were misleading senior citizens into voting for particular candidates. In other cases, Harris said he had evidence that canvassers were filling out forms without the elderly or disabled voters’ knowledge. The incidents of vote harvesting were brought to the AG’s attention two years ago, and the Weekly was the first news media outlet to publish the dozen names Harris handed to the AG’s office for investigation in a broad story about the politics of voter fraud (“Voter Fraud or Business as Usual?” Dec 15, 2016). Now it appears that the first arrests from that probe have been made.

“Four individuals were indicted on 30 felony counts of voter fraud and arrested following a lengthy investigation by the Election Fraud Unit of” the AG’s office, Paxton said in a recent statement. “The defendants — all members of an organized voter fraud ring — were paid to target elderly voters in certain [North Side] Fort Worth precincts in a scheme to generate a large number of mail ballots and then harvest those ballots for specific candidates in 2016.”

The AG’s office hasn’t disclosed which Fort Worth candidates hired the female canvassers now facing criminal charges, but Harris has long maintained that former Fort Worth City Councilmember Sal Espino and State Rep. Ramon Romero benefited from the vote-harvesting ring. Espino and Romero vehemently deny any wrongdoing and say Harris is simply trying to intimidate the Hispanic community into avoiding the polls.

Even with the recent arrests, we believe isolated incidents of voter fraud are a non-issue. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the purging of voter rolls are much bigger problems and way bigger threats to democracy, but since they overwhelmingly affect only non-Republicans — and since Texas is bigly red — you can expect more time wasted on “fraud.”

Minorities could also help themselves by showing up at the polls. In 2016, Texas Monthly reported that “non-Hispanic whites constituted just 43 percent of the state’s population, but in 2016, they represented more than 65 percent of all the votes cast.” Those votes go overwhelmingly to Republican candidates, according to the Pew Research Center.

No matter how these arrests and others related to Tarrant County’s vote harvesting investigation turn out, one grim result stands out. Parts of our Hispanic community, after witnessing AG staff question Northside residents and arrest four locals, might be intimidated away from the voting booth come November.

That probably doesn’t worry Paxton. Locking up Hispanic men, women, and children seems to be the new vogue in Texas.</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>Even before enactment, anticipation of passage spurred investments, jobs and growth



 Not long ago, a dentist called seeking advice about investing in new equipment for her practice. Business had been strong, but she envisioned enhancing the customer experience and growing her practice even further. The experience will set her apart from many other dentists, allowing her to retain existing clients and attract new ones. New state of the art dental technology would allow her to jump-start the process. The dentist is part of a wave. Across the country, small and mid-sized business owners, entrepreneurs and start-ups are primed to invest in and expand their businesses.

These new provisions in the tax law are a godsend to business owners. They’ve have been asking for this, they’ve been heard, been provided for and are now anxious to spend and invest. My business consultancy has received a steady flow of calls from many such owners. While diverse in geography, size and focus, they are all eager and optimistic. And they are all inspired by one thing: the new federal tax law. Like the dentist, they are finding that the incentives created by the statute make reinvestment and expansion a smart move. In the less than a year since it was passed, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is fast becoming one of the biggest incentives to US business growth in at least a decade. Unemployment has reached lows not seen in decades. After a strong push from the Trump Administration, the law went into effect in December 2017. It includes several features designed to relieve tax burdens on businesses of all sizes. Of particular note, the corporate tax rate reduction has leveled the playing field for US-based companies when they compete with foreign based companies in the global economy. Lower taxes are passed to the consumer. Another popular provision – affecting over three quarters of small companies – allows a 20% deduction for all pass-through businesses. Another much-heralded clause slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. Yet another allows businesses to deduct up to 100% of investments in new business equipment costs during the first year.

A broad range of business owners seek to take advantage of the new law. The head of a small technology company showed us a proposal to expand its marketing. A service company presented us questions about how it could expand by 25% in the next two years. Our dentist wants to expand into vacant space in her building. This law is turbo-charging the entrepreneurial spirit of our business owner clients. In each instance, the owners were able to key in on particular provisions of the new tax law that apply to their unique situations. Together with them, we have found ways to use the law to their advantage. Just as important as particular features of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the overwhelmingly positive climate it is helping to create. Owners who have felt shackled for years by a restive investment environment and too many taxes and regulations are now encouraged to pump more money into their businesses. A good example is the Rabine Group, a collection of small constructions companies based in Illinois. This year they have pledged to commit more resources to hiring, research and development, and expansion. They are also offering employees far bigger raises this year than in any of the previous eight years. All of these moves are a result of the new tax law, the owners have reported.

Continued below... Tax cuts do pass down to many levels and spur spending That spirit of optimism has already brought signs of vibrancy that the US economy has not seen in years. Business investment is set to rise by 7% this year, following a robust 5.3% increase in 2017, on the heels of timid, desultory growth the previous decade. As businesses expand, so do their needs for new employees. More than 134,000 new jobs were added in September 2018, bringing an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. The average hourly earnings gain is now 2.8% year over year. Retail sales are up, too; they are projected to reach 4.2% this year. These gains are all inspired by the new tax breaks and reduced federal regulatory fervor. Tax cuts do pass down to many levels and spur spending. That’s a basic economics axiom. Some say the new law favors major corporations over small business owners. That’s understandable. It’s a party line and core belief among some. Indeed, thus far, the biggest tax savings resulting from the new law have been posted by the biggest US banks. In all, the six largest Wall Street banks – Bank of America, Citi Group, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley – have reported a total of nearly $5 billion in savings, according to their Second Quarter reports. The new law has allowed the banks to cut their tax rates from as high as 31% to just 10 or 11 percent. Large multinational corporations have slowed their borrowing, lessening the amount of debt they issue, according to the Wall Street Journal, using data from Goldman Sachs. The Fed analyzed share buybacks of non-financial firms with large cash holdings – and they have doubled, mimicking a similar tax holiday 15 years ago.

Corporate tax cut and gradual repatriation of trillions of dollars into the US economy However, the strong gains posted by banks and other corporations actually mean everybody wins. The gains have contributed to a buoyant economic mood, which in turn is inspiring corporate employees and other consumers to spend more on their personal lives. Much or most of that spending has gone to small and medium-sized companies. The corporate tax cut and gradual repatriation of trillions of dollars into the US economy has also helped mitigate fears that more jobs are going overseas. That is encouraging consumers to focus on retirement planning, invest in new cars or other goods – or in their companies – or take much-needed vacations. This too benefits smaller businesses. Many businesses have undoubtedly not fully researched the ways the tax code can benefit them. As with any new statute, they need time and expert advice to understand the law’s fine print. However, the smartest owners are moving quickly. Like the dentist, they have discovered that the time to take advantage of the new tax law is now, or at least as soon as they can grasp the new law’s opportunities, intricacies – and potential pitfalls for the unwary.

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Mark Murphy is the founder of Northeast Private Client Group and author of “The Win-Win Outcome: The deal maker’s guide to buying and selling dental practices.” Financial advisor Adam Schlossberg is a partner in the Group.

Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. As a privately owned website, we reserve the right to remove any comment and ban any user at any time.Comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence and death, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal or abusive attacks on other users may be removed and result in a ban.-- Follow these instructions on registering</s>SACRAMENTO — A Chico man was sentenced to federal prison today for tax fraud.

Randy K. Barker, 59, was given three years and 10 months in prison by District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, for filing of false claims, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.

Barker was convicted of filing a 2008 income tax return that falsely claimed more than $1.4 million in interest income, uploading false interest reporting forms to an Internal Revenue Service database to conceal the crime.

The return indicated the same amount had been withheld, with allowed Barker to claim a refund of $987,900.

Barker and his wife spent the majority of the money within weeks by purchasing a $495,000 house, more than $90,000 in home furnishings, and a truck, according to Wagner.

Barker is associated with the Tax Challenger community, which believes tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid.</s>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  A California woman has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme.

The Sacramento Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2544rLR ) that the U.S. attorney”s office says 46-year-old Vera Kuzmenko of Loomis participated in a scheme that cost financial institutions more than $16 million.

Prosecutors say Kuzmenko and another woman obtained more than $30 million in residential loans on more than 30 homes purchased through straw buyers in the Sacramento area.

Kuzmenko had been a licensed real estate agent for part of the scheme. Prosecutors say she created fraudulent loan applications on behalf of the straw buyers and served as a straw buyer herself.

Five other people have been found guilty in connection with the scheme.

The case resulted from an investigation by the FBI and Internal Revenue Service.
A tax fraud scheme discovered in 2017.