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Forensic Accounting Firm Collapses in Florida

The South Florida business community is reeling after a prominent accounting firm has been put in receivership.

Ironically, Miami-based forensic accounting firm Lewis B. Freeman & Partners often acted as a court-appointed receiver, and its namesake was even the president of the Florida Receivers Forum, an industry association, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

Freeman’s financial problems apparently are related to a $4.8 million civil tax penalty levied by the IRS in which the agency claims that Freeman sold illegal tax shelters years ago.

Freeman has disputed the IRS’s claims, however. He paid only $3,000 of the penalty, and then turned around and sued the IRS seeking a refund of the $3,000. Apparently the legal gambit has gone awry, though, and his firm is now under the receivership of another court-appointed receiver, Kenneth Welt.

The details are still murky, and perhaps it will take another forensic accounting firm to sort it all out.

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