May 4, 11

NEWS / Michigan Business Owner Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion

WASHINGTON – John Walter Kaber, a resident of Bloomfield, Mich., pleaded guilty to tax evasion, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced today. The Honorable U.S. District Court Judge Victoria A. Roberts set sentencing for Sept. 20, 2011.



According to the plea agreement, Kaber was the owner of Merchant Processing, a business that installed credit card processing systems. Despite earning substantial income from Merchant Processing and incurring a tax liability on that income, Kaber failed to file timely U.S. Individual Income Tax Returns (IRS Forms 1040) for the 1991 and 2005 tax years. Kaber filed Forms 1040 for the 1992-1996 and 2000-2004 tax years that reflected a tax due and owing, but failed to pay the taxes due. Kaber also failed to pay a portion of the employment taxes for Merchant Processing that were due to the IRS during the 2000-2003 tax years. The defendant’s total tax due and owing to the United States for the 1991-1996 and 2000-2005 tax years, including both income taxes and employment taxes, is more than $868,000.



According to the plea agreement, in order to carry out his tax evasion scheme and to conceal his assets from the IRS, the defendant, among other things, used his wife’s name to purchase and refinance two parcels of real property and to purchase a boat, boat slip and vehicle. Kaber also sought to prevent the IRS from collecting unpaid taxes from his bank accounts by, among other things, cashing checks rather than depositing them in the bank, depositing business receipts into his wife’s checking account, and removing his name from a joint bank account after it became subject to an IRS levy.



On Nov. 6, 2007, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan entered a judgment against the defendant for his unpaid 1991-1996 taxes.



This case is being prosecuted by Tax Division trial attorney Melissa Siskind and was investigated by the IRS-Criminal Investigation Division. Additional information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division and its enforcement efforts may be found at www.justice.gov/tax/index.html .

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/May/11-tax-566.html

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