Schemes Catch Up with Investment Banker

A Greenwich, Conn., investment banker was convicted on charges of evading millions of dollars of taxes, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.A jury found Richard Josephberg guilty on a total of 21 charges, including three counts of tax evasion, four counts of failure to file tax returns, five counts of failure to pay taxes, two counts of subscribing to false tax returns, and single counts of conspiracy to defraud, health care fraud and obstructing the due administration of the Internal Revenue Service.

Josephberg, 59, a former securities analyst at Goldman Sachs, was a founding partner of the Cralin Group, a company that promoted various tax shelter transactions between 1977 and 1985. According to court documents, those shelter transactions resulted in more than $100 million of bogus losses.

After two of his partners were convicted on fraud charges, the IRS issued notices to Josephberg to recover $1.5 million in taxes he allegedly owed for the period from 1977-1985. Prosecutors said that Josephberg took a number of steps between 1995 and 2004 to evade payment on the debt, including hiding income in his children’s names, directing hundreds of thousands of dollars into dummy businesses, causing misleading bankruptcy petitions to be filed for himself and his wife, and even failing to report taxes due from his employment of a nanny and housekeeper.

The court also found that Josephberg had conspired with the accountant who prepared his tax returns from 1977 to 1997 to file false tax returns.

His sentencing is scheduled for July 19.

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