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According to the DoJ, a Florida financial advisor was sentenced on May 14, 2025 to eight years (8) in prison for orchestrating a nearly decade-long scheme to promote an illegal tax shelter and to steal client funds.

The following is according to court documents and statements made in court: Stephen T. Mellinger III, of Delray Beach, was a financial advisor, insurance salesman, and securities broker operating in Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, and elsewhere. 

Beginning In Late 2013, Mellinger Conspired With
Others To Promote An Illegal Tax Shelter Whereby
Clients Would Claim False Tax Deductions For So-Called
“Royalty Payments” To Fraudulently Reduce Their Taxes.

In reality, the “royalty payments” were merely a circular flow of money designed to give the appearance of genuine business expenses. Typically, a client would send money to bank accounts controlled by Mellinger and his co-conspirators, who then sent the money, minus a fee, to a different bank account that the client controlled. 

In total, Mellinger and his co-conspirators helped clients prepare tax returns that claimed over $106 million in false tax deductions, which caused a tax loss to the IRS of approximately $37 million. Mellinger and a co-conspirator, who was a relative, collectively earned approximately $3 million in fees from the scheme.

In January 2016, Mellinger learned that several of his clients were under investigation and that the United States had started seizing their funds. Mellinger and the relative subsequently stole more than $2.1 million from some of the clients, a portion of which Mellinger used to buy a home in Delray Beach.

In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett for the Southern District of Mississippi ordered Mellinger to serve three years of supervised release and to pay approximately $37 million in restitution to the United States.

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According to Law360, he wife of a man found liable for construction company employment taxes is off the hook for $2 million in liabilities, a New York federal jury found, saying she was not responsible for collecting the taxes and paying them over to the federal government in Martha Gonzalez v. U.S., case number 2:22-cv-03370, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The jury unanimously found Friday that Martha Gonzalez, who had sued the government in 2022 to release her from liens related to the debt, was not responsible for collecting five quarters' worth of employment taxes in 2012 and 2013 for Camabo Industries Inc., in which she formerly owned shares.

The vote followed a five-day trial in which Gonzalez made the case that, as stated in a pretrial order, she "did not manage the company's day-to-day functions, had no control over the tax, financial, or business operations of Camabo" and "did not prepare, review, sign or file any employment tax returns on Camabo's behalf."

Gonzalez claimed the Internal Revenue Service had threatened to seize her property for years over the liabilities "in a bid to hold her personally liable in what can only be described as a strategy of trying to establish responsibility by association."

In October, a New York federal judge found that her husband, Boris Gonzalez, was liable for the taxes. The government sought to hold Martha Gonzalez liable as well, filing a counterclaim against her complaint seeking a money judgment for the trust fund recovery penalties the IRS had assessed against her. As of December, that balance was roughly $2 million, according to a pretrial order.

The government argued in a response to her complaint that: 

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You Better Thank Again, if You Like Your Freedom!

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According to Law360, House Republicans plan to meet Tuesday to deliberate a sweeping extension of their 2017 tax overhaul that would lock in low individual rates and deduction limits, expand child care and estate tax breaks, and make permanent tax incentives for small pass-through businesses and U.S. multinational corporations.

The 28-page tax bill, released late Friday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., would expand most of the popular tax incentives in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the signature legislation of President Donald Trump's first term. The tax bill is the product of intense negotiations between House and Senate GOP lawmakers and the White House, who hope for a vote on it by Memorial Day.

Smith's bill would make TCJA individual tax rates permanent by removing the sunset date of Dec. 31, 2025, and would permanently extend the doubled standard deduction with a temporary increase through 2028 of $1,500 for married taxpayers and $1,000 for individuals.

Personal exemptions and miscellaneous itemized deductions would be repealed permanently, and the child tax credit would be increased to $2,500 per child through 2028 before dropping to a permanent credit of $2,000. The bill would require both parents to have Social Security numbers in order to claim the credit.

The exemption for estate and gift taxes would be permanently raised to $15 million per spouse, from $13.99 million per spouse, and indexed for inflation. The TCJA exemption from the alternative minimum tax would also be made permanent.

On the business side, the bill would: 

• permanently extend the deductions for foreign-derived intangible income and global intangible low-tax income. 
• It would also repeal a scheduled increase in the base erosion and anti-abuse tax. and 
• The bill would also extend the deduction for qualified pass-through business income and increase the deduction rate to 22%.

According to a Joint Committee on Taxation report released Saturday, the bill would cost $4.9 trillion over the next decade, including nearly $2.2 trillion to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's individual tax rates permanent. The increased standard deduction would cost nearly $1.3 trillion, but permanently eliminating personal exemptions would raise nearly $1.9 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years, according to the report.

• The bill would lower the average tax rate for those making more than $1 million in annual income from 30.7% to 27.4%, according to a second report released by the JCT on Saturday. 
• The average tax rate for taxpayers making $500,000 to $1 million would be reduced from 29.9% to 25.8%.

The legislation is subject to change and will likely be significantly altered if it eventually is passed into law. For example, it is silent on the fate of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, one of the most debated provisions of the TCJA, nor does it include Trump's campaign promise of ending the taxation of tipped income or the tax break for carried interest.

The House Ways and Means Committee's ranking member, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., faulted Republicans for releasing the bill late Friday and, he said, omitting major parts of the legislation.

"I'll Tell You What's Coming: Handouts For Billionaires, Healthcare Cuts For The People," He Said In A Statement.

Trump said Friday that he and other Republicans would graciously accept a "tiny" tax increase for the rich to help lower- and middle-income workers. "Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!" Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

To fully extend and build upon the 2017 tax cuts, this means that the reconciliation bill must include at least $2 trillion in verifiable savings either through spending reductions or scaling back the size of the tax package," the group said. "If savings fall short, the Ways and Means Committee's instruction must be lowered dollar-for-dollar to keep the reconciliation bill within the agreed limits."

Have IRS Tax Problems?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243) 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to DoJ, Credit Suisse Services AG pleaded guilty and was sentenced on May 5, 2025 to conspiring to hide more than $4 billion from the IRS in at least 475 offshore accounts. The guilty plea by the Swiss corporation is the result of a years-long investigation by U.S. law enforcement to uncover financial fraud and abuse.

In addition to the plea, Credit Suisse Services AG entered into a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia in connection with U.S. Accounts booked at Credit Suisse AG Singapore. Under the NPA, Credit Suisse Services AG agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in ongoing investigations and to pay significant monetary penalties for maintaining accounts in Singapore on behalf of U.S. taxpayers who were using offshore accounts to evade U.S. taxes and reporting requirements.

According to the Plea Agreement, NPA, and documents filed in court today: from Jan. 1, 2010, and continuing until about July 2021, Credit Suisse AG, which had ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth individual clients around the globe, conspired with employees, U.S. customers, and others to willfully aid U.S. customers in concealing their ownership and control of assets and funds held at the bank. 

This enabled those U.S. customers to evade their U.S. tax obligations in several ways, including by opening and maintaining undeclared offshore accounts for U.S. taxpayers at Credit Suisse AG, and providing a variety of offshore private banking services that assisted U.S. taxpayers in the concealment of their assets and income from the IRS and allowed for their continued failure to file FBARs. 

In doing so, Credit Suisse AG committed new crimes and breached its May 2014 plea agreement with the United States.

Between 2014 and June 2023, Credit Suisse AG Singapore held undeclared accounts for U.S. persons, which Credit Suisse AG Singapore knew or should have known were U.S., with total assets valued at over $2 billion. Credit Suisse AG Singapore failed to adequately identify the true beneficial owners of accounts and failed to conduct adequate inquiry about U.S. indicia in the accounts. In 2023, during the post-merger of UBS AG Singapore and Credit Suisse AG Singapore, UBS became aware of accounts held at Credit Suisse AG Singapore that appeared to be undeclared U.S. accounts. UBS froze some of the accounts, voluntarily disclosed information about those identified accounts to the Justice Department and cooperated by undertaking an investigation into the identified accounts.

Under today’s resolutions, Credit Suisse Services AG and, by extension, UBS AG, is required to cooperate fully with ongoing investigations and affirmatively disclose any information it may later uncover regarding U.S.-related accounts. The agreements provide no protections for any individuals. Pursuant to the guilty plea and the NPA, Credit Suisse Services AG will pay a total of $510,608,909 in penalties, restitution, forfeiture, and fines.

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