Shamrock shake-up; now for the slow life; Superiority complex; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Canton, Ohio: CPA Ronald DiPietro and Christos Karasarides Jr. have been convicted of tax, gambling, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction crimes related to their illegal gambling businesses and their scheme to conceal the illicit proceeds from those businesses to avoid taxes.
Between 2009 and 2018, Karasarides and DiPietro, together with others, operated multiple illegal gambling businesses, including Skilled Shamrock, as part of an organized criminal operation. At Shamrock, which primarily operated slot machines, patrons gambled more than $34 million between 2012 and 2017, with Shamrock’s owners retaining more than $7 million. Karasarides and DiPietro sought to conceal their ownership of the gambling businesses through nominee owners and sham contracts.
Karasarides owed the IRS more than $2 million in taxes on income he earned gambling and from his other businesses, which the IRS tried to collect. DiPietro helped Karasarides thwart collection efforts by lying to the IRS, including by preparing returns for Karasarides, that the latter didn’t have the assets or income to pay his taxes.
Karasarides also conspired to launder money from his gambling businesses to make it more difficult for the IRS to seize his home by using a straw purchaser to disguise his ownership of the residence.
The pair also used the money from their schemes to buy luxury vehicles and to buy and sell property. Karasarides took several gambling trips, making millions of dollars of bets at legal casinos nationwide.
Sentencing for both is May 1. DiPietro faces a maximum of five years in prison for conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, three years for operating an illegal gambling business, five years for tax evasion and three years for each count of preparing false income tax returns.
Karasarides faces up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering; five years for tax evasion, each count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, each count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and for falsification of records; and three years in prison for each count of operating an illegal gambling business, three years for witness tampering and three years for filing false income tax returns.
Before the trial, Thomas Helmick, who served as a nominee owner of one of Karasarides’ illegal gambling businesses, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S.; his sentencing is May 2, when he will face up to five years in prison. During the trial, Christopher Karasarides pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. by executing false documents and acting as a nominee owner for some of Christos Karasarides’ assets. Christopher Karasarides will be sentenced on April 30; he faces up to five years in prison.
Sarasota, Florida: Phillip Roy Wasserman, a former lawyer and licensed insurance agent, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, substantive counts of wire fraud and mail fraud and evasion of income taxes.
Wasserman, found guilty by a jury last year and who later pleaded guilty, and his co-conspirator
Some victims were persuaded to liquidate traditional investments, such as annuities, or to borrow funds against existing life insurance policies to generate cash to invest in the venture. They were not told about surrender fees and other costs associated with these liquidations and Rossman prepared income tax returns for the victims to conceal negative personal tax consequences that resulted from liquidations.
Wasserman also used victims’ money to make Ponzi-style payments to earlier investors in FastLife and to investors in his earlier hedge fund and real estate fund ventures.
Wasserman spent a significant amount of the money on a lifestyle that included a luxury personal residence, a beach house, professional hockey tickets, concerts and other shows, vehicles, jet skis, jewelry, personal celebrity entertainment, gambling, retail shopping, home improvements, personal insurance and a host of other expenses for his personal benefit and the benefit of family members.
He took numerous steps to evade payment of more than $900,000 in taxes and to conceal a multitude of civil judgments and other debts pending against him at the time he solicited victims to put their money into FastLife.
He also took steps to conceal FastLife’s mounting business debts to vendors and service providers, employees, independent contractors and victims. Wasserman created a second set of books and fabricated a compensation agreement to convince investigators that he had not made improper personal use of investors’ funds. He urged one witness to lie to investigators, attempted to dissuade several victims from cooperating with authorities and requested that one victim make a baseless complaint against an investigator. Wasserman also lied that he had an audit from a highly regarded financial services firm that would show that neither he nor FastLife had committed any wrongdoing.
He was also ordered to forfeit $6,318,299.75, the proceeds of the crime.
Montgomery, Alabama: Tax preparer April Michelle Nesbitt, 44, of Sandersville, Georgia, has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for aiding and assisting in the filing of false returns.
From 2015 to 2021, Nesbitt worked at Superior Tax Group in Montgomery, where she filed federal income tax returns for clients. She admitted that on at least two occasions she included false information on a client’s return, causing the taxpayer to receive greater refunds than they were entitled to. Specifically, Nesbitt included expenses on a client’s 2018 and 2020 returns related to a childcare business that did not exist.
She was also ordered to pay $46,669 in restitution to the IRS.
Houston: Peter Joseph Tignini, formerly of Cypress, Texas, has been sentenced to 41 months in prison for tax evasion in connection with not reporting income he earned working overseas.
From 2013 to 2018, Tignini worked in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, earning more than $4.75 million. For tax years 2013 through 2017, he filed returns that claimed that his income was only some $100,000 each year. The amount Tignini reported each year was near or below the amount that U.S. citizens who live and work abroad for most of a year can exclude from their taxable income on their U.S. tax return. He filed no return for 2018.
He caused a tax loss to the IRS of $1,169,348.
After an interview with federal authorities, he altered his employment contract and payroll documents to make it appear that his former employer, not Tignini himself, was responsible for failing to report the income and pay the tax. Tignini then caused his attorneys to provide the false documents to the Justice Department’s Tax Division and the IRS. After investigators asked a witness about the online program Tignini used to create the phony documents, Tignini attempted to delete the documents from his account.
He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $1,169,348.60 in restitution to the United States.
Milwaukee: Business owner Lakeesha S. Jackson has pleaded guilty to tax and bankruptcy crimes.
Jackson was the owner and operator of Nurturing Concepts, a personal care agency. She failed to pay over to the IRS more than $100,000 in payroll taxes that her business withheld from employee paychecks in the latter three quarters of 2017.
Nurturing Concepts then filed under Chapter 7, listing the IRS as its largest creditor. Jackson admitted to fraudulently submitting a forged bank statement during this proceeding to hide a $40,000 transfer from Nurturing Concepts to Jackson’s successor business, Center of Care LLC. She also admitted to improperly diverting to this successor business payments made out to Nurturing Concepts.
