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Another Aegis customer gets a free vacation

September 01, 2009

The Chicago-bases "Aegis" trust outfit has had bad outcomes all around. The promoters of the offshore tax evasion program got prison sentences ranging from ten to eighteen years. That may be long enough to have some awkward encounters with their former clients, like Donald Sikma:

Donald Sikma, a businessman from Dyer, Ind., was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Theresa L. Springmann in Fort Wayne, Ind., the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.
In June 2009, Sikma pleaded guilty to one count of filing false tax returns for the 1998 tax year. According to court records, Sikma sheltered millions of dollars of income using a tax avoidance scheme promoted by the now-defunct Aegis Company. As part of this scheme, Sikma transferred portions of his income to an offshore trust. Sikma failed to report this income on his individual income tax returns. Using the offshore Aegis trust and other sham trusts, Sikma fraudulently avoided paying at least $1.13 million in federal income taxes.

The Moral: There's no magic way to manipulate trusts to make your taxes disappear legally.

Tags: aegis.tax crime.