Trial Starts for Former UBS Executive in Tax Fraud Case

The trial of UBS AG’s former chief executive Raoul Weil started this week in Florida. He is accused of helping American clients avoid taxes and conceal $20 billion of US taxpayers’ assets in offshore accounts. Weil is the highest-ranked UBS executive to be prosecuted by the US.

The Swiss banker allegedly helped “black account” holders – American citizens who didn’t want their assets disclosed to the IRS – hide millions of dollars and charged them steep fees for the extra service. Weil and other UBS bankers used multiple credit cards, changed hotels often and avoided electronic communication with clients, claims the prosecution’s star witness, Hans Schumacher, who was a banker at UBS.

The trial is expected to last several more weeks. If convicted, Weil could face up to five years in prison. (Alleged Mastermind of UBS Tax Evasion Scheme Faces Trial)

NJ man sentenced to prison for $65 million tax scheme

A New Jersey man has been sentenced to 17 months in prison for filing more than 8,000 fraudulent income tax returns that sought $65 million from the government. David Pinski and a handful of others conducted the largest and longest running stolen identity refund fraud scheme to have been identified, and resulted in a loss of $12 million to the U.S. government.

Pinski obtained personal identifies of Puerto Rican citizens and used that information to file electronic 1040s. He and his co-conspirators then received the fraudulent tax refund checks, cashed and spent them. Some of the defendants gambled more than $250,000 at casinos, and “resided in a house worth more than $1.6 million” while supposedly working in a grocery store, says an article published by the Cliff View Pilot.

The fraud was discovered because the tax forms were filed electronically from a handful of traceable IP addresses.