An Alaskan plastic surgeon is looking at up to 95 years in prison for trying to hide assets from his spouse in a divorce proceeding. When the doctor’s wife filed for divorce in 2007, the plastic surgeon headed south of the border where he deposited millions of dollars in marital assets in foreign bank accounts to avoid sharing the wealth.
In Costa Rica, he opened bank accounts where he deposited $350,000 in cash and placed a thousand ounces in gold into a safety deposit box. In Panama, he deposited $4.6 million under the name of a sham corporation.
Of course, when it came time to declare his marital assets in the divorce, he did not reveal the foreign bank accounts, assets or income. As for the corporation, he said he could not convert it into cash until 2013, and even presented a forged promissory note showing his sizable, albeit untouchable, investment.
All this fibbing and squirreling-away of the marital money was all for naught. After he finalized his divorce in 2011, he attempted to repatriate the millions of dollars only to have them seized by Homeland Security Agents. The whole scheme eventually unraveled and the surgeon is due to be sentenced in March for tax evasion and wire fraud, which, when all added up, could lead to nearly a century in jail and hundreds of thousands in fines.
Source: Forbes.com, “Surgeon Hid Money In Divorce, Is Convicted Of Tax Evasion, Faces Up To 95 Years Prison” by Robert Wood, accessed January 23, 2016.