Taxable Talk

It’s one thing when Aunt Sally inherits €8000 in the old country, it sits in the bank for one day, and she then gets the money the next day in the US. Yes she should have filed an FBAR, but it really is an innocent violation.

Then we have what David and Nadav Kalai did. The two (father and son) headed up United Revenue Service, a tax preparation firm with offices in Orange County, California and Bethesda, Maryland. The Kalais’ methods were of the very deliberate violation of the rules on FBARs:
– Take a high wealth individual,
– Have him form a foreign corporation in Belize,
– Have that corporation get a bank account with Bank Leumi (an Israeli Bank) in Luxembourg, and
– Don’t disclose any of this to the IRS, FINCEN, or the Department of the Treasury.

Last year they were convicted of one count each of conspiracy to defraud the IRS, and two counts of willfully failing to file an FBAR. Yes, they practiced what they preached: They used the same methods to not disclose their own foreign bank accounts.

The sham corporations that the co-conspirators incorporated in Belize and elsewhere were used to act as named accountholders on the secret Israeli bank accounts. The co-conspirators then recommended and facilitated the transfer of client funds to the secret accounts and prepared and filed tax returns that falsely reported the money sent offshore as a false investment loss or a false business expense, or entirely omitted any income earned by a client from a foreign source. The Kalais also failed to disclose the clients’ secret accounts on tax returns that they prepared, and caused the clients to fail to file FBARs with the U.S. Treasury as required.

The Kalais will have some time to think over what they did. David received 36 months at ClubFed and a $286,000 fine while his son received 50 months at ClubFed and a $10,000 fine. An alleged co-conspirator, David Almog, remains at large. Meanwhile, three customers (so far) of the Kalais and United Revenue Service have pleaded guilty to tax charges, and there are likely more charges coming.

Tags: FBAR

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2015 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Tax Fraud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.