Author of book about avoiding taxes gets 5 years in prison
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Donald Turner, the author of a book on how to beat U.S. taxes by transferring businesses to phony offshore trusts, was sentenced today in Erie to five years in federal prison and taken directly to jail in handcuffs.
Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill Jr. also ordered him to pay more than $408,000 in restitution.
Mr. Turner, originally from Colorado and most recently living in India, was convicted last year in U.S. District Court in Erie of conspiring to impede the IRS in connection with tax schemes he promoted throughout the 1990s through his First America Research company.
He had been indicted in 2001 along with Daniel Leveto, a Meadville veterinarian with ties to the militia movement in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Leveto's wife, Margaret.
Mr. Turner and Mr. Leveto had marketed a book written by Mr. Turner, "Tax Free! How the Super Rich Do It!," which instructed wealthy professionals how to set up dummy offshore corporations to funnel income back to themselves without paying taxes. Cracking down on those kinds of schemes, called abusive trusts, has long been a priority of the tax division of the Justice Department and the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS.
Mr. Leveto put Mr. Turner's advice into practice by selling his veterinary business to an entity called Center Company in the Turks and Caicos Islands. He continued to run his practice in Meadville, but filtered his earnings through foreign bank accounts to the Meadville bank account of Center Company.
The Levetos were convicted in 2005, but Mr. Turner became a fugitive. He had been living in India but returned to the U.S. in the summer of 2010 and turned himself in to the U.S. Marshals Service in Erie.
He had been free pending sentencing, but Judge Cohill today ordered him escorted to prison immediately by U.S. marshals.
First Published January 26, 2012 12:00 am
