Client pleading guilty to fraud
 

I will leave out some details to protect the identity of the guilty party.

About five years ago, I did this enormous house addition to a house located in a small town near here. We ended up designing in ten bedrooms, an addition with indoor pool, and a carriage house with nice living quarters above. The house is georgeous but the possibility of ever selling it for the mil or so they have in it seemed remote.

I always wondered how the fellow with the prosperous but fairly modest looking business he had could afford to spend so much on the home addition. I noticed in the client Architect meetings that the wife seemed to be making the decisions. I figured that it must be her money.

A few months ago federal marshalls came in and closed his business and filed charges of defrauding the federal government. I thought....Ahhhh, so that is where the money was coming from.

A few days ago it was announced he was taking a plea bargain for defrauding the gov out of 3.5 mil and a half mil in taxes.

Yikes!

The house appears to be sitting empty.

Hope you got paid in full before they busted the bastard.

Can the feds come after your payment? Just curious.

How do these people sleep at night?

I was paid. I don't see how they can come after me, I didn't do anything wrong.

I don't understand that either. I suppose they have no conscience, so it's not a problem for them.

Since the job was five years ago, it sounds like Tom has already been paid, thank goodness.

Why folks seem to think that they'll be the ones that beat the system is beyond me. But it doesn't keep them from trying.

This on the heels (or maybe the toes) of the lady in OR who got the $2.1MM refund from the state by committing tax fraud (although one appears to be federal and the other state). I figured that would have to add up pretty quickly, as much as $5 BILLION/yr. according to some estimates.

Sociopaths sleep VERY well at night.

They have no guilt, no remorse, no conscience, no shame.

All they care about are themselves.

In this case, they are only sorry that they got caught.

They seemed like very nice folks.;)

Sociopaths often "seem" nice.

Hopefully the "plea bargain" will include a LOOOOONG time before they ever hear a wooden door slam.

Full restitution with interest will be probably ordered, by the Court, but as a practical matter, the defendants will have paid their lawyers first, and then they will then claim utter poverty, and not a dime will ever be paid in restitution.

Women thought Ted Bundy was a dream boat, apparently . . .

LOL! It seems that every time there's a serial killer, or a bank robber or something, the next door neighbors say that!:D

That can be the scociopaths stock in trade unfortunatly. I doubt they even have any remorse when caught. They seemsd to have owed a fair dollar to the revenue people.

Joel Rifkin was a long-time customer at my rental business about 20 years ago. He was the last person you would expect to murder 18 prostitutes.

He never had any money. Now I know why.

Sociopath? Better that the $3.5MM was re-invested into the US economy (he hired builders and local workers) than used to pay for military parasitism and outright murder in Iraq and Afghanistan (among other abominations). I call him a patriot or a modern-day Robin Hood. Stole from the unworthy and paid the worthy.

According to the paper they have given up two real estate holdings inlcuding the large house we worked on, two cars and $29,000 in jewlery.

He also will be banned for life from his chosen profession (not theiving).

Fine, but the money's in the economy already. The people who sold and worked on the houses got paid, the jeweler got paid, the car dealers got paid. Stole from the pigs, helped the ordinary folk. Good for him, shame he got caught.

You just described my "relations", in the thread where I was asking about background checks, to a T.

My father wasn't even in the ground yet, when they started trying to position themselves to take advantage of my mother, in the aftermath of his passing last August.

But my father and I had talked about about our suspicions years before, and made plans what to do in case our worst fears were realized.

Immediately after his passing, we made certain legal moves to help protect my mother's interests - such as my mother deeding the land and house to my name, with a lifetime estate provision for her.

Sad to say, as things turned out, that's probably the only reason she still has a house to call her own.

And said relations were incredibly PO'd when they found out what had happened. My mother related to me that when I'm not around, they will actually get worked up to the point of yelling at her and trying to order her to go see a lawyer and get the deed revoked. Mom says she just looks at them and smiles, then starts talking about something else altogether.

Mom and I both know that it would take my agreement as well now, to have said deed revoked, and given what we've seen of their lies and deeds over the past few months, that'll be a cold day in hell.

No not really. He stole from all of us.

Most government spending ceased to benefit the average American oh, at least 10 years ago, if not before. The Feds steal from productive states, and either give it to hayseed states, or throw it down a rat hole. At least the public got some "direct" stimulus in this case.

As to DC and the scum who pretend to represent the public --- f--- them all.

Small world, a 'care taker' to one of my aunts spent a year ransacking her farm house (she was old and could no longer climb the stairs) they stripped everything of worth from upstairs including jewelry that had been in the family over 100 years, she collapsed one day and was rushed to the hospital (she had stopped eating) and lapsed in and out of lucidness, the Nurse caught the 'care taker' trying to get her to sign a will (she left none) leaving everything to him so he could strip the rest of the house. Thankfully the nurse called the police and the sadsack was arrested (had a warrant and they charged him with more relating to what he was doing to her) soon after she passed on never returning home and my uncle executed over the estate dividing it up between the remaining heirs... its sad but it dosnt shock me to think what people would do to the older generations to get ahead in the world. its very sad :(

A Robin Hood of a sort.

Why did Robbin Givens keep her last name when she married Mike Tyson....

A. because if she did take his last name, she would be "Robin Tyson. :)