Tax fraud by individuals and businesses has been estimated to cost the United States government over $450 billion annually. Tax evasion or fraud can be carried out by filing false or deceptive tax returns, hiding assets and income in offshore bank accounts, concealing business ownership or other financial activities, or through outright identify theft.
Cracking down on tax fraud is a simple matter of fairness to the vast majority of taxpayers who regularly pay the government what they owe. Tax whistleblowers are a vital weapon in the fight against tax fraud. Individuals who bring information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) relating to tax fraud or tax underpayments exceeding $2 million may also be eligible to receive a reward if their information leads to a successful enforcement action.
Based in California, our legal team at Wisner Baum can represent tax fraud and IRS whistleblowers nationwide. Call (310) 207-3233 for a free consultation.
IRS whistleblowers play an important role in exposing corporate tax fraud, and the Tax Relief and Health Care Act offers IRS whistleblowers significant rewards for bringing original information concerning tax fraud to the government’s attention.
Under the Tax Relief and Health Care Act, tax fraud whistleblowers may be entitled to receive between 15 and 30 percent of the amount recovered by the IRS in a successful enforcement action, as long as the tax, penalties, interest, and additional amounts in dispute exceed $2 million. If the tax, penalty and interest is less than $2,000.000 the reward will be limited to a maximum of 15% and will be at the discretion of the IRS.
The IRS whistleblower program gives any individual with original information concerning large-scale tax underpayments, fraud, or evasion—including accounting errors—significant financial incentive to file a whistleblower lawsuit against the perpetrator(s). Since 2007, whistleblowers have helped the IRS collect billions in lost revenue, and whistleblowers have been rewarded hundreds of millions for their assistance.
Tax whistleblowers who are aware of supporting documents, but not able to get them, are instructed to describe these documents and identify their location to the best of their ability.
Below are some common types of tax fraud:
Contact us today at (310) 207-3233 to start exploring your legal options. Located in Los Angeles, we take cases across the U.S.
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In May of 2019, the jury in the case of Pilliod et al. v, Monsanto Company ordered the agrochemical giant to pay $2.055 billion in damages to the plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a Bay Area couple in their 70s. R. Brent Wisner served as co-lead trial attorney for the Pilliods, delivering the opening and closing statements and cross-examining several of Monsanto’s experts. Wisner Baum managing shareholder, Michael Baum and attorney Pedram Esfandiary also served on the trial team in the Pilliod case.
The judge later reduced their award to $87M. Monsanto appealed the Pilliod’s verdict which the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District denied on August 9, 2021. Monsanto then requested the California Supreme Court review the appeal’s court decision, which the court denied on Nov. 17, 2021. Monsanto (Bayer) then submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court which SCOTUS denied on June 27, 2022, allowing the final judgment of $87M to remain intact.
$289.2 million jury verdict in Monsanto Roundup trial
Wisner Baum co-represented Dewayne “Lee” Johnson in the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. On Aug. 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $39.25 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages to Mr. Johnson, a former groundskeeper who alleged exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides caused him to develop terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Months after the jury verdict, the judge overseeing the trial reduced the punitive damages to $39.25 million. Mr. Johnson decided to accept the remittitur, bringing the adjusted amount awarded to Mr. Johnson $78.5 million.
Monsanto (Bayer) appealed the verdict and Johnson cross appealed. On July 20, 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against Monsanto but reduced Mr. Johnson’s award to $20.5 million. The company chose not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the litigation.
In 2016, Wisner Baum attorney Timothy A. Loranger and six other attorneys in the Plaintiffs’ Management Committee were able to secure a $265 million settlement for victims of the 2015 Amtrak 188 derailment in Philadelphia, one of the largest in the U.S. for 2016.