Petersen Landis Blog

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Manhattan tax attorney Harold Levine and Florida certified public account Ronald Katz were charged in Manhattan federal court in an eight-count Indictment with engaging in a multi-year tax evasion scheme involving the diversion of millions of dollars of fees from a Manhattan law firm, and the failure to report that fee income to the IRS.   

The fact that the letter of intent is non-binding and chiefly addresses business points of the deal sometimes lulls business owners into a sense of complacency on the legal aspects of the deal, with the mindset being that the lawyers can hash out the legal terms later.

San Diego-based investment adviser Raymond Lucia’s request that the court consider his challenge to the constitutionality of the SEC’s use of in-house courts was recently rejected by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lucia, a well-known investment adviser with a long career, was charged by the SEC with conducting misleading investment seminars that promoted a “buckets of money” investing strategy that was purportedly supported by empirical testing, when no such reliable testing had been done. The SEC proceeding resulted in what Lucia’s own attorneys described as a “career-ending lifetime industry bar”.