Are Swiss Bank Accounts A Red Flag For Fraud, Or Is The IRS Just Jealous?
It isn’t just your imagination if you think that ordinary people like us pay dearly for minor breaches of the rules, while the wealthy brazenly act like the laws of nations do not apply to them. Swiss bank accounts are a powerful symbol of this. People who can afford to do so stash their money in bank accounts in Switzerland and then laugh as their home countries entreat them in vain to pay taxes on this money. Owning a bank account in a country where you do not have citizenship is legal in most jurisdictions; the United States cannot stop its citizens from opening bank accounts in Switzerland, and in most cases, it does not want to. The existence of foreign bank accounts in your name can make the IRS suspect you of tax evasion and scrutinize your finances more closely. Tax evasion, which means knowingly failing to pay taxes you owe, is a crime, and so is money laundering, where you try to disguise the fact that certain assets belong to you or that you obtained them illegally. If you are under investigation for financial crimes because of transactions involving foreign bank accounts, contact a West Palm Beach white collar crime lawyer.
Miami Man Faces Fraud Conspiracy Charges for Allegedly Concealing Taxable Funds in Swiss Bank Accounts
Dan Rotta is a citizen of the United States and of Brazil; he has lived in Miami for many years. According to evidence documents presented in his case, he kept $20 million in accounts in several Swiss banks between 1985 and 2020. With some of the accounts, he presented his Brazilian passport when opening the account and led the banks to believe that it was the only nationality he had, so the banks would not know that he owed taxes on the money in the U.S. In the case of others, an accomplice, who lives in Brazil and only has Brazilian citizenship, opened the accounts in his own name, even though Rotta controlled the money. Rotta also created shell corporations and elsewhere to conceal the money’s connection to him and to Switzerland; at one point, he even opened an account by using a pseudonym. In 2011, when the bank in Switzerland where Rotta and the accomplice held the money came under investigation for its role in concealing the assets of account holders from the U.S., they closed those accounts and moved the money to two other banks.
When the IRS first investigated, Rotta presented falsified documents showing that the money he received from foreign accounts was a loan and that he repaid it by transferring funds to foreign accounts. The investigation continued, though, and eventually he faced charges for defrauding the U.S. government. He pleaded guilty in March 2025; he can face a sentence of up to five years in prison.
Contact a West Palm Beach Criminal Defense Lawyer Today
Attorney William Wallshein has more than 41 years of experience, including five years as a prosecutor in Palm Beach County. Contact William Wallshein P.A. in West Palm Beach, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/wealthy-miami-man-pleads-guilty-to-decades-long-scheme-to-defraud-the-irs
