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WE LACK SYMPATHY...

March 14, 2005

...for entertainer L'il Kim, aka Kimberly Jones:

Ms. Jones sought to deflect the blame for her financial lapses to her manager, Hillary Weston, and her tax accountant, Michael Mitnick. Ms. Weston pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of falsifying a passport, and has been in the courtroom every day during the trial with the contingent of spectators supporting Ms. Jones. Mr. Mitnick, of the New York tax firm Berdon, L.L.P., testified as a defense witness.

We lack sympathy despite her straitened circumstances:

But a prosecutor in Ms. Jones's federal perjury trial showed yesterday that at the same time Lil' Kim was flashing diamonds and living high off earnings of at least $750,000 a year, she owed almost $1 million in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. She reported to the I.R.S. that the jewelry she owned was worth only $49,000.

Tax documents that the prosecutor, Cathy Seibel, presented in the trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan also showed that Ms. Jones had bought a second home in Alpine, N.J., for $2.3 million in May 2002, in a year when she paid almost nothing on her mounting tax arrears. Her first home was an $850,000 town house in Englewood, N.J.

A tax cheat? L'il Me?

The New York Times Account is here.

Hat tip: TaxGuru.net

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