Precious Metals Broker in Brooklyn Sentenced to Prison for Tax Evasion
Assigned Commissions to Shell Corporations to Conceal his Income
A resident of Dania Beach, Florida, was sentenced to prison for evading income tax and aiding and assisting the preparation of false tax returns, on May 3rd, announced Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.
Christopher Wolf was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Raymond J. Dearie. On October 4, 2018, following a trial in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, a federal jury convicted Wolf of two counts of tax evasion and two counts of aiding and assisting the preparation of false tax returns.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, in 2010 and 2011, Christopher Wolf operated Rothchild & Associates LLC (“Rothchild”), in Brooklyn, New York. Rothchild was in the business of selling precious metals to investors over the telephone. Although Wolf controlled all aspects of Rothchild’s operations, it was technically owned by a third party. Wolf concealed the income he earned from Rothchild by instructing the third party owner to pay Wolf’s commissions to two shell corporations.
Wolf filed a false 2010 individual income tax return that did not report any of the commissions he earned selling precious metals. For 2011, he did not file an individual tax return. He also caused corporate income tax returns to be filed for the companies where he deposited his commissions, but included phony deductions on those returns to avoid paying the taxes he owed. Wolf’s conduct caused a tax loss of approximately $240,000 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
In 2000, in an unrelated case, Wolf was convicted of securities fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced to prison for over ten years.
In addition to the term of imprisonment imposed, U.S. District Court Judge Dearie ordered Wolf to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $237,550 in restitution.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
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