JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SUES TO BLOCK ALLEGED SHAM-TRUST TAX SCAM SAID TO HAVE COST TREASURY AN ESTIMATED $31 MILLION

Las Vegas-Based Scheme Allegedly Helped Customers Fraudulently Conceal Income

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department announced today that it has sued two Las Vegas-based promoters of an alleged sham-trust tax scheme that the complaint alleges has caused an estimated $31 million in losses to the federal treasury. The suit alleges that Reinhold Sommerstedt and Daniel Young of Las Vegas sold sham-trust packages to customers for as much as $14,500 and helped their customers hide their income from the IRS in Caribbean bank accounts. The defendants’ customers allegedly used phony loans and gifts to repatriate their money while concealing their income from the IRS.

Also named in the suit are Lynn Lakers, a Boulder City, Nevada tax-return preparer who allegedly prepared false tax returns for the phony trusts used in the scheme, and Stephen Nestor of Boise, Idaho, a former IRS revenue officer who allegedly signed tax returns on behalf of the bogus trusts.

“The Department of Justice is firmly committed to shutting down fraudulent trust schemes that cost the treasury and law-abiding taxpayers millions of dollars each year,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

Offshore transactions and trust misuse are two of the IRS’s Dirty Dozen tax scams for 2006, which are listed at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=154293,00.html.

More information about the Justice Department’s efforts against tax-scam promoters can be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/taxpress2006.htm. Information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division can be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/index.html.