A San Marcos man has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for his role in a long-running tax fraud scheme that used the identities of charities to evade millions of dollars in taxes.
Robert Holcomb, 53, was convicted by a federal jury on July 20, 2018, of four counts of making false statements to a financial institution. He was sentenced in federal court on February 22, 2019, and ordered to pay a fine of $600,000.
According to the evidence presented at trial, Holcomb held himself out as an ‘asset protection’ specialist who had the ability to use charitable trust accounts to reduce the tax liability of clients. He convinced his clients to forward him the profits from their businesses, which he then cycled through a series of bank accounts—with names that sounded like charities—and then returned the funds, minus a commission, with the assurance that they no longer constituted taxable income.
Over the course of a decade, Holcomb transferred more than $12 million in otherwise taxable income through his accounts, collecting ‘commissions’ from his clients of more than $1 million dollars. He was forced to open dozens of new accounts to keep the tax-evasion scheme operating after a number of his bank accounts were frozen in 2011.
Holcomb created corporate entities whose names matched those of existing charities and misappropriated their taxpayer identification information to open new bank accounts. The charities whose identities he used included Light of Life LLC, On Eagle’s Wings LLC, Push the Rock, LLC, and Sharing and Caring, LLC. Representatives from each organization testified at trial that they did not know Holcomb and never gave him authorization to use their identities.
‘Holcomb used a series of sham trust arrangements to divert millions of taxpayer dollars into his own pocket,’ said U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer. ‘His offense was particularly egregious because he used the identities of real charities in order to avoid detection and continue collecting commissions on funds that should have gone to the U.S. Treasury.’
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel Zipp and Seth Askins. Acting Special Agent in Charge Bryant Jackson of IRS Criminal Investigation praised the efforts of his team in investigating and prosecuting the case.
Key Facts
- State: California
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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