WASHINGTON – A federal court has permanently barred Victor Carlysle Sullivan Jr. of Albany, Ga., from promoting and organizing an alleged tax fraud scheme involving the use of offshore trusts, the Justice Department announced today. Judge W. Louis Sands of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia signed the civil permanent injunction, which Sullivan agreed to without admitting wrongdoing.
The government alleged in the complaint that Sullivan, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), promoted a tax fraud scheme that used sham domestic and offshore trusts to help customers evade taxes and to conceal their income and assets. The complaint stated that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated that the trust scheme cost the U.S. Treasury over $5 million since 1998. More information about the case and a copy of the government complaint are available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv07013.htm.
The injunction requires Sullivan to give the government a list of the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of customers for whom he prepared trust-scheme tax documents in the past ten years. He also is required to mail copies of the injunction to those customers.
Trust misuse is included in the IRS’s 2007 list of the Dirty Dozen tax scams. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/. Since 2001 the Justice Department has obtained injunctions against more than 230 tax return preparers and tax-fraud promoters. Information about these cases is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/taxpress2007.htm. Information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division can be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/index.html.
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