Taxable Talk

When I hear the name Randolph Scott, I think of the late actor. He played leading men (generally heroes in Westerns) during his long and illustrious career. This Randolph Scott is anything but a hero.

Randolph Scott of Doylestown, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia) was an estate and probate attorney. He represented an estate, one valued at more than $6 million (at date of death in 2005), so an Estate Tax Return needed to be filed. Estate tax of $520,351 should have been paid to the IRS. That didn’t happen.

Instead, Mr. Scott diverted “approximately $2,317,917.67” from the estate to his tax office. That’s theft. In 2009, the executor of the estate died. From the Department of Justice press release:

Scott failed to disclose the executor’s death so that Scott could continue to receive money intended for the estate at his law firm. Scott would then forge the deceased executor’s signature and deposit funds intended for the estate into accounts under his control. Scott had the successor executor sign a document renouncing the position of successor executor so that Scott could continue to forge the signature of the deceased executor and divert money belonging to the estate.

Mr. Scott pleaded guilty back in March to mail fraud, tax evasion, attempting to interfere with administration of internal revenue laws, and three counts of failure to file income tax returns. He was sentenced on Thursday to four years at ClubFed and must make of the $2.3 million he stole. Unlike a Randolph Scott movie, the only happiness with this ending is that this Randolph Scott won’t be doing this to anyone else.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2015 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Estate Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Fraud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.