3 found guilty in $10M tax scam
A federal jury yesterday found three defendants guilty of conspiring to defraud the IRS of more than $10 million from 2000 into early 2003.
A federal jury yesterday found three defendants guilty of conspiring to defraud the IRS of more than $10 million from 2000 into early 2003.
U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody set sentencing in May for John Michael Crim, David Brownlee and Constance Taylor.
A fourth defendant, Paul Crim, was acquitted.
Brody ordered that bail for Taylor and Brownlee be revoked, pending a response from Brownlee's attorney.
The judge said she felt that the trio, who also were found guilty of trying to impede the IRS from doing its job, were flight risks.
Michael Crim, the father of Paul Crim, has been in federal custody since his arrest in November 2006.
The three could face several years in jail under advisory sentencing guidelines.
The four defendants had been charged with promoting and selling bogus domestic and foreign "trust" packages.
The packages were marketed by the Commonwealth Trust Co., and sold to clients all over the country without IRS approval.
Clients were told they could put assets into the trusts, funnel money into offshore trusts, then bring it back to the United States and escape paying significant taxes to Uncle Sam.
Six other defendants pleaded guilty in the case. One defendant, C. Robert Dadds, is awaiting trial.
Prosecutors declined comment after the verdicts, but two jurors said evidence presented by the government was overwhelming.
"There was a lot of evidence in there, a lot, 70 boxes of it," said a juror who identified himself only as Joe, an aircraft loader for UPS who lives in Ridley Park.
A second juror, who identified herself only as Claire from Philadelphia, said jurors voted to acquit the younger Crim because he was "too young to have mastered the business" to the extent of the other defendants.
"He was just a kid," she said of the Crim, 26, who was hoping to catch a flight last night back to his Orange County, Calif., home.
Michael Engle, attorney for Paul Crim, said he thought jurors sensed the younger Crim was "being interjected into the investigation to get at his father."
Attorneys for John Michael Crim, Taylor and Brownlee said they were "disappointed" and "shocked" by the verdict.
The feds had said that Crim, a longtime tax protester, was the mastermind behind the tax scam.
Defense attorneys Jonathan F. Altman and Jack Gruenstein said they were disappointed with the verdict and were weighing their legal options.
The defense attorneys had attacked the credibility of three co-defendants, all of whom copped pleas and agreed to testify for the government at trial.
But Todd Henry, John Michael Crim's attorney, conceded that the testimony of the cooperators was "a high hurdle" for the defendants to overcome. *
