Texas tycoon Sam Wyly is set to face off against the Internal Revenue Service at trial tomorrow over more than $2 billion the agency says he owes for using offshore trusts to engage in one of the largest tax frauds in U.S. history, Reuters reported yesterday. The trial in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas comes nearly a year after Sam Wyly and his late brother Charles' estate were ordered to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $299.4 million for engaging in a massive securities fraud through those same trusts. In the SEC case, a Manhattan jury in 2014 found the Wylys liable for scheming to hide from investors $550 million in trading profits in the stocks of four companies on whose boards they sat. Following the SEC's victory, Sam Wyly, who last appeared on Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans in 2010 with a net worth of $1 billion, and Caroline "Dee" Wyly, Charles Wyly's widow, filed for bankruptcy in October 2014. Charles Wyly died in a car crash in 2011. Read more.
For more information on fraud cases, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case.