I’m not a big drinker. The former President and co-owner of Domecq Importers will have 10 years at ClubFed of being a teetotaler after pleading guilty to fraud and tax fraud charges. Domecq Importers was a large liquor importer based in Connecticut.
Michael Domecq had a not-so-good idea. Have some outside vendors (primarily advertising agencies) send in invoices for work that was never done. Then have his company pay the vendors. That’s fraud against his own company.
But Mr. Domecq went a step further. He had the vendors then issue checks to shell corporations controlled by him and his accomplices: Chief Financial Officer Alfredo Valdes, Vice President of Marketing Gabriel Sagaz, and Vice President of Sales Thomas Kaminsky. Those three individuals had already pleaded guilty to various charges.
Did I mention those shell corporations used offshore bank accounts? And that the shell corporations didn’t pay any income tax? That’s tax fraud.
This isn’t Mr. Domecq’s first trouble with the law. He was convicted in the United Kingdom in 2006 of possessing a false Spanish passport and of illegally getting a U.K. drivers license.
Mr. Domecq, as part of his plea agreement, will submit corrected tax returns for 1989 through 2006, and will pay all of the taxes, penalties, and interest. Given that the unreported income is over $7.6 million, Mr. Domecq will be writing out some big checks to the United States Treasury.
It would have been much simpler to just pay the tax in the first place…but somehow that thought never enters the mind of the tax evader.