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    Prominent Cryptocurrency Investor Faces Senate Tax Inquiry

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    The Finance Committee’s top Democrat sent a letter last month to Dan Morehead, the founder of Pantera Capital, about the investigation.A Senate committee is investigating whether a prominent cryptocurrency investor violated federal tax law to save hundreds of millions of dollars after he moved to Puerto Rico, a popular offshore tax haven, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent the letter on Jan. 9 to Dan Morehead, the founder of Pantera Capital, one the largest crypto investment firms.The letter said the Senate Finance Committee was investigating tax compliance by wealthy Americans who had moved to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a special tax break for the island’s residents that can reduce tax bills to zero.The investigation was focused on people who had improperly applied the tax break to avoid paying taxes on income that was earned outside Puerto Rico, according to the letter.“In most cases, the majority of the gain is actually U.S. source income, reportable on U.S. tax returns, and subject to U.S. tax,” the letter said.The letter requested detailed information from Mr. Morehead about $850 million in investment profits he made after moving to Puerto Rico in 2020, noting that he “may have treated” the gains as exempt from U.S. taxes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hunter Biden Faced Prison Time for Tax and Gun Charges

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      President Biden not only spared his son Hunter the humiliation of two felony convictions — he also saved him from what might have been a significant stretch of time in a federal prison.Hunter Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in Los Angeles in September for falsifying records and failing to file returns dating to a period when he was hooked on crack, alcohol and easy cash.He faced up to 17 years in federal prison during a scheduled sentencing hearing in Los Angeles on Dec. 16, but would most likely have served no more than 36 months behind bars, according to sentencing experts.A jury in Wilmington, Del., in June found Mr. Biden, the president’s younger son, guilty of three felony counts for lying on a federal firearms application after an extraordinary seven-day trial. That trial made painfully public Mr. Biden’s crack addiction, reckless behavior and ruinous spending — narrated by three former romantic partners, including the widow of his brother, Beau Biden.The gun conviction came with a stiffer maximum sentence, 25 years, but he was expected to face a shorter sentence — of up to 16 months — during a hearing scheduled in Delaware on Dec. 13.The sentences would most likely have run concurrently, with Hunter Biden serving the longer stretch.On Sunday, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed paperwork in both jurisdictions informing both judges that the pardon had rendered the hearings moot. More

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      Tax Preparers Charged in Scheme to Defraud Covid Relief of $65 Million

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      The preparers filed for pandemic-related tax credits on behalf of ineligible clients and then netted hefty filing fees, officials said.Two Mississippi tax preparers used multiple schemes to defraud $65 million from programs that had been designed to help businesses stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, federal prosecutors said this week.The preparers, Renata Walton, 44, and Nicole Jones, 36, both of Olive Branch, Miss., were indicted on more than 50 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, preparing false tax returns and obstruction of justice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee said on Wednesday.They both pleaded not guilty and were each released on $100,000 bond, court documents show.Ms. Walton owned R&B Tax Express in Moscow, Tenn., where she and Ms. Jones prepared tax returns.Federal prosecutors said that the two women contacted small-business clients and asked if they were interested in pandemic-related grant money, according to court records. The women would then file for pandemic-related tax credits on behalf of the clients even though they were ineligible for those funds, officials said.The money came mostly from the Employee Retention Credit and the Sick and Family Leave Credit programs, court documents show.The Employee Retention Credit program offered companies thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that the pandemic was hurting their businesses, but that they were continuing to pay workers. Sick and Family Leave Credit offered tax breaks to employers who voluntarily gave their workers paid sick and family leave if they needed to take time off because of the pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fan Bingbing, Once China’s Top Actress, Returns to Film Years After Tax Scandal

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      Fan was a megastar until 2018, when she was fined tens of millions of dollars over unpaid taxes and her career tanked. “Green Night” is her first film since the scandal.Fan Bingbing will return to the screen on Friday with the online release of “Green Night,” six years after one of the biggest names in Chinese cinema spectacularly fell from grace over a tax scandal.Fan was at the peak of her career in 2018, with a long list of blockbusters and lucrative deals with luxury brands, when she disappeared for months. She re-emerged in October that year with an apology. The authorities in China fined her the equivalent of almost $70 million in unpaid taxes and penalties.The scandal halted Fan’s film career in China, the biggest movie market outside the United States. She avoided criminal charges, however, and remained in the public eye as she expanded a beauty product business, Fan Beauty.In her return to film, Fan is the lead in “Green Night,” a film by Han Shuai, a Chinese director, and set in South Korea. It will be available to stream in the United States on Friday after making its debut on the festival circuit in Berlin last year.In “Green Night,” Fan, now 43, plays a Chinese woman who partners with a young South Korean woman to break free from oppression. The film is about “women helping women and women redeeming women,” she said last year at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea. “Some of my experiences and some stories in recent years are integrated into the character I present in the movie.”Fan Bingbing, in red, and the South Korean actress Lee Joo-young at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea in October 2023.Lee Jae-hee/Yonhap, via Associated PressFan could not be reached for comment. Speaking about her hiatus, she said at the Busan festival that the break had given her “time to ground” herself.Her downfall was triggered by an accusation online that she was paid millions of dollars more for her work on a film than was reported to the tax authorities. The practice of using two contracts was widespread in many industries in China as a way to avoid taxes, but this accusation prompted a wider investigation into the entertainment business.“I have had deep and profound self-reflection,” Fan wrote in her 2018 apology, posted on the social media platform Weibo. “I feel shamed and guilty for what I have done.”The authorities in China maintain strict control of the media, including entertainment and censor content they deem inappropriate. Movie stars and other prominent figures in the entertainment industry are expected to adhere to the government guidelines.“Green Light” has not been released in mainland China, but many internet users there appeared to be able to watch it through unofficial channels. Douban, a Chinese platform where users can review movies, books and music, indicated Thursday that around 38,000 users had watched the film. More

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      Texas Woman Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Fraud Scheme

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      Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families, spending the money on a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said.A Texas woman who stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families and spent the money to fund a lavish lifestyle was sentenced on Tuesday to federal prison, the authorities said.The defendant, Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, pleaded guilty in March to five counts of mail fraud and five counts of filing a false tax return, according to a criminal court docket.Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the Western District of Texas sentenced Ms. Mello on Tuesday to 180 months, or 15 years, in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. According to federal prosecutors, Ms. Mello was a civilian employee for the U.S. Army and worked as a financial manager for a child and youth grant program at the Fort Sam Houston Base in San Antonio. Part of her job was to determine whether funding was available for various organizations that applied to the grant program, called the 4-H Military Partnership Grant.Around the end of 2016 through at least August 2023, Ms. Mello formed a fraudulent business called Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, which she used to steal Army funds by falsely claiming it provided services to military members and their families, prosecutors said. In some cases, Ms. Mello forged her supervisor’s digital signature on the paperwork, they said.Ms. Mello used her “experience, expert knowledge of the grant program, and accumulated trust,” to swindle her colleagues, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I.R.S. Failed to Police Puerto Rico Tax Break, Whistle-Blower Says

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      An insider accused the agency of failing to scrutinize a lucrative tax break in Puerto Rico designed to lure wealthy Americans to the island.For the past decade, thousands of wealthy Americans have been flocking to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a tax break that can cut their tax bills to zero. For nearly as long, there have been allegations that the benefit enables multimillionaires to avoid paying what they owe when they reap big investment profits.Now, an Internal Revenue Service insider has accused the agency of failing to police the tax break. Despite a high-profile campaign announced more than three years ago to unearth possible abuse, the agency has audited barely two dozen people and has collected back taxes from none, according to a letter that an agency insider wrote this year to lawmakers and that has been reviewed by The New York Times, as well as interviews with I.R.S. officials.Senate officials have begun an investigation into the whistle-blower’s allegations about the Puerto Rican tax benefit.“It’s been three years since the I.R.S. announced its enforcement campaign on this issue,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “It needs to pick up the pace.”Hamstrung by decades of budget cuts, the I.R.S. has regularly struggled to crack down on tax avoidance by the wealthiest Americans and large companies. Audits of millionaires have declined more than 80 percent over the past decade, reaching record lows. The agency rarely examines giant private equity firms. And the annual “tax gap” — the difference between taxes that are owed and what is paid — is estimated to be $600 billion.In an interview, Danny Werfel, the I.R.S. commissioner, said the agency’s enforcement campaign in Puerto Rico, while still in its “early chapters,” was accelerating because of the $80 billion in new funding that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act provided to the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Guy Wildenstein, Art Family Patriarch, Found Guilty in Tax Trial

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      Mr. Wildenstein hid a prized art collection and other assets from French authorities to avoid paying millions in inheritance taxes, a Paris court ruled.Guy Wildenstein, the international art dealer, was found guilty in France on Tuesday of massive tax fraud, the latest twist after years of legal entanglements that have unraveled the secrecy that once surrounded his powerful family dynasty.Mr. Wildenstein, 78, the Franco-American patriarch of the family and president of Wildenstein & Co. in New York, was sentenced by the Paris Appeals Court to a four-year prison sentence, with half of it suspended, and the other half to be served under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The court also sentenced him to pay a one million euro fine, or about $1.08 million.He stood accused of hiding significant chunks of his family’s art collection and other assets in a maze of trusts and shell companies when his father, Daniel, died in 2001, and after his brother, Alec, died in 2008.Prosecutors had said that he was trying to dodge hundreds of millions of euros in inheritance taxes. At the trial, which was held in the fall, they had requested a slightly more lenient prison sentence for Mr. Wildenstein, but they had also requested a much larger €250 million fine, or about $270 million.The Wildensteins, a family of French art dealers spanning five generations, were historically secretive about the exact details of their collection, which has included works by Caravaggio, Fragonard and many other blue-chip artists.Prosecutors said that the family was responsible for “the longest and most sophisticated tax fraud” in modern French history, by concealing art and other assets under complex foreign trusts and by shielding artworks worth millions of dollars in tax havens. By doing this, prosecutors said, the family grossly underestimated its enormous wealth when the time came to pay inheritance taxes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Even in Washington, Weasel Words Will Only Get You So Far

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      Gail Collins: Hey, Bret, would you hate it if I asked for a couple of predictions for 2024?Bret Stephens: Gail, it would be better if you asked me for my prediction for the year 2112. That way, hardly anybody will remember how wrong I was and I won’t be around for them to remind me. But here’s my 2024 prediction anyway: Trump is elected president again, and we become neighbors in Toronto.Now your turn.Gail: OK, Donald Trump is going to be campaigning for president while on trial for an astonishing range of crimes. Meanwhile, we’ll shiver with fear every time Joe Biden coughs. But in the end, I predict the nation will square its collective shoulders and elect the better man, even if he’s beginning to look like an old 81.Bret: Biden has a 37 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, and Trump is running four points ahead of him in the latest Wall Street Journal poll — or six points, if you factor in third-party and independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. This is beginning to have the makings of an epochal disaster, not just for the country but for Western civilization. Yet Democrats are driving at high speed toward a rock wall because they don’t want to tell Grandpa that he no longer should be allowed to get behind the wheel or even suggest he replace his vice president with someone more … confidence-inducing.Gail: Here’s a pre-new year prediction: In stores around the nation, children — and their parents — will stand in line to sit on Santa’s lap and beg him to bring them a different presidential race.Bret: Nikki Haley against Gretchen Whitmer — how much fun would that be? But we are where we are. Pass the absinthe.Changing the subject: Did you watch the testimony of the university presidents?Gail: Yeah, Claudine Gay of Harvard is probably going to be haunted for the rest of her life for having said “it depends on the context” when asked whether calling for genocide of the Jews violated Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment.Bret: Along with Elizabeth Magill, the now-former president of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth, the president of M.I.T. Just imagine the reaction to any university president saying “it depends on the context” as to whether calling for the genocide of, say, Black or Asian people is permissible. It was heartening to see Democrats and Republicans alike taking them to task for such colossally stupid answers, even if it’s hard to find myself on the same side with an election denier like Elise Stefanik.Gail: In the world of higher education, free speech is a cardinal virtue and leaders learn how to get past questions that would force them to call for anything that sounds like censorship.Magill framed her answer in what sounded like a weaselly dodge, but I’m sorry she felt compelled to resign.Bret: I’m against cancel culture on principle, so I hope Gay, who apologized for her remarks, and Kornbluth, who hasn’t — at least as far as I know — don’t follow Magill out the door. There needs to be space for contrition and learning.I’m also a fervent believer in free expression, including at private universities that don’t have a legal obligation to abide by the strictures of the First Amendment. The problem is that universities like Harvard often enforce rules against hate speech when it comes to heinous statements against some minority groups, but they invoke free speech when it comes to heinous statements about Jews. That double standard lies at the root of the antisemitism that pervades too many campuses. If colleges were truly serious about free speech, they would work a lot harder to pierce the left-wing bubble that so many college campuses have become.The other big national story from last week is Hunter Biden’s indictment on tax evasion charges. Your thoughts?Gail: Well, we’ve been down this road before. Hunter is certainly in a ton of trouble on the tax front, but I don’t believe voters will hold his problems against his father.Bret: We’ll see.Gail: Joe Biden is a man who, early in his political career, lost his wife and daughter in a terrible car accident. Then later he lost a beloved son — the star of the next generation of Bidens in the political world — to cancer.Hunter was the offspring who was always getting into trouble. Many families have one and God knows he’s caused his father a lot of grief. The message the country should be getting from all this is that our president is a leader who can work through incredible personal pain for the common good.Bret: I think we both recognize that the president has suffered through a lot — and having a surviving son with a longstanding drug habit has been part of the suffering. He has my sympathy.But Joe’s political problem is that Hunter’s story keeps getting worse — and parts of it suggest attempts to conceal the full truth. Before the election, Joe claimed that Hunter’s lost-and-found laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. False. He said he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings and never got involved. False. David Weiss, the special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, was about to give Hunter a sweetheart plea bargain. The judge rejected it, and now Hunter has been hit with tax evasion charges that could end up in a long prison sentence.Gail: The last was a punishment for being Joe’s son. A normal defendant would have had no problem getting that deal approved. A normal well-lawyered defendant, anyway.Bret: He’s accused of evading more than $1 million in taxes and spending it on drugs and, uh, companionship. And Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that paid Hunter a fortune to sit on its board when Joe was vice president — with a special responsibility to help clean up Ukrainian corruption — cut Hunter’s salary in half after Obama left office.Gail: Don’t think even the Bidens’ best friends believed Burisma hired Hunter for his depth of knowledge on energy issues in post-Soviet republics. But let’s just say it’s not unusual for the children of powerful men and women to get jobs because of their names.If there were serious stories about Joe using his political muscle to, say, get Burisma a special government contract, that would be a different matter.Bret: At a minimum, all of this will help Trump neutralize some of the ethical and legal charges against him, at least with some wavering voters, the way Bill Clinton’s record of sexual misconduct neutralized Trump’s vulnerabilities on that score. But if there are other shoes to drop, it will turn into an even bigger political liability for an already vulnerable president.Gail: Praying all the shoes are already on the floor. But I think the Republicans are flirting with trouble when they tie all this into an impeachment crusade. Just gonna remind the public that Trump was the only president in American history to be impeached twice.Bret: Do they even remember? Stalin supposedly said that the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic. I propose a corollary for Trump: A single criminal indictment against a former president is a disgrace, but 91 counts is a blur.Gail: OK, gonna quote that one in 2024.Bret: Gail, we’ve made it a December tradition to mention charities we admire and support. Do you have a recommendation for our readers?Gail: First, can I say kudos to the many readers who provide ongoing support for projects that help the poor, educate the neglected, protect the environment and do so many other great things?Bret: You may indeed.Gail: I’m happy to recommend La Mision Children’s Fund in El Cajon, Calif. It fights hunger and works to improve education in impoverished communities in Mexico near the California border. With all the current hysteria over border politics, it’s a particularly good time to encourage something so sensible.Your turn.Bret: Rails-to-Trails conservancy. It has been around since the 1980s, working for the creation of biking and walking trails across the country, including a trail that will eventually connect Washington, D.C., to the state of Washington. Conservatives and liberals will always have differences, but we should be able to agree on the importance of conservation, of urban and rural renewal, and creating great public spaces that can be enjoyed by everyone.Gail: Once again we’re in accord. Although the disaccords are always fun, too. Happy holidays on both fronts, Bret.Bret: Gail, before we go, I want to put in a word for our colleague Megan Stack’s brilliantly reported and beautifully written essay on life for Palestinians in the West Bank. I’ve known Megan for more than 20 years, when we both worked in Jerusalem. And while we are on opposite sides of this subject, politically speaking, I have nothing but respect for the deep sense of humanity she brings to everything she writes. We need to preserve our intellectual humility by paying attention to those with whom we disagree, sometimes passionately. The alternative really is the abyss.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Mike Lindell’s Lawyers Say He Owes ‘Millions’ in Fees

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      The disclosure, made in a court filing this week, is a sign that the pillow magnate and leading supporter of the election denial movement is facing financial stress.For nearly three years, the pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell has been one of the leading financial supporters of the election denial movement, a tireless promoter of false claims that Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election and of efforts to change how Americans vote.But recent public records, as well as interviews with Mr. Lindell and others, suggest that he is facing financial troubles.Lawyers defending Mr. Lindell in several defamation lawsuits this week filed to withdraw from the cases, citing “millions” of dollars in unpaid fees. The withdrawal would leave Mr. Lindell without a lawyer in lawsuits where plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 billion in damages.In an interview, Mr. Lindell said he didn’t blame his lawyers for dropping him. “They have to feed their families,” he said. He said that his activism related to the 2020 election had contributed to his financial woes.In a filing late on Friday, Smartmatic, one of the firms suing Mr. Lindell for defamation, said it did not object to the withdrawal of lawyers but expressed concern that he was using the news “as an opportunity to fund-raise for his election fraud campaign.” The voting equipment firm noted that Mr. Lindell had already sent out a fund-raising email seeking $200,000 from supporters that invoked his lawyers’ motion.Since 2021, Mr. Lindell, the chief executive of the bedding company MyPillow and a Trump associate, has financed conferences, legal efforts and even his own digital media venture to further unproven or debunked conspiracy theories regarding the use of voting machines to steal the 2020 election.He has worked with state-level groups across the country, and continues to speak with activists on weekly conference calls. And he has used MyPillow advertising to support a range of conservative and right-wing media, including many outlets that amplify his claims.Mr. Lindell says he has directly spent as much as $60 million on his political endeavors.Days after Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Lindell was photographed entering a brief meeting at the White House with Mr. Trump, carrying notes on which the phrase “martial law if necessary” was visible. That month, MyPillow lost brick-and-mortar distribution contracts with major big-box retailers. (The stores offered a variety of explanations unrelated to Mr. Lindell’s politics.) Last year, after Walmart pulled the company’s products from its stores, it recorded a loss of $7 million, according to Mr. Lindell. MyPillow is a private company, and these figures could not be independently verified.Property records show that one of the two residences he owns through a limited-liability corporation is under an Internal Revenue Service lien for $4.6 million in unpaid taxes from 2020. Mr. Lindell said the lien was related to an ongoing negotiation over a tax write-off for an investment in a pharmaceutical company.In April, an arbitration panel ordered Mr. Lindell to pay $5 million to a software engineer who took up Mr. Lindell’s challenge to debunk data he claims proves that the 2020 election was hacked. Mr. Lindell has refused to pay the engineer, Robert Zeidman, and both men have filed lawsuits over the matter.In August, Mr. Lindell said, American Express cut his line of credit to $100,000 from $1 million, effectively ending his ability to pay his lawyers in the defamation suits. The decision, he said, was an “absolute hit job” related to his political activities, though he said the company had not said as much.American Express did not comment on Mr. Lindell’s credit, but said in a statement that it “does not make customer decisions based on personal views or political affiliations. Our risk and underwriting models take into account a number of financial factors, including business inflows and outflows, and credit history.”On Thursday, Andrew Parker, a lawyer at the Minneapolis firm Parker Daniels Kibort who has represented Mr. Lindell in many of his recent legal battles, filed motions to withdraw from the defamation suits filed by Dominion Voting Systems, Smartmatic, and Eric Coomer, the former director of product strategy and security at Dominion.Mr. Parker did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, he stated that Mr. Lindell started falling behind on payments early this year, and on Oct. 2, Mr. Lindell informed the firm that he and his company were “not able to get caught up or make any payment” on the “millions of dollars” owed to the firm.Dominion also sued Fox News on similar grounds, and this April it reached a $787.5 million settlement with the media company. Asked if he had considered settling his own suit, Mr. Lindell said, “Absolutely not.”It remains to be seen how Mr. Lindell’s finances will affect the broader election denial movement or the conservative news media, which he had helped finance on multiple fronts.In emails and interviews, several influential activists said that Mr. Lindell continued to be an important figure in the movement, though some noted that their financial support came from other backers. Other donors contributed about one-third the cost of a conference Mr. Lindell hosted in Missouri in August, Mr. Lindell and other participating activists said.MyPillow’s advertising and revenue-sharing agreements with conservative media have been a major source of support for right-wing figures, such as Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has a revenue-sharing agreement to promote MyPillow on his “War Room” podcast. Such promotions have increased slightly in the last year, according to the analytics companies iSpot.tv, which covers television advertising, and Magellan.ai, which covers podcasts.Mr. Bannon has been highlighting Mr. Lindell’s financial woes on his show, portraying Mr. Lindell as the victim of corporate and government overreach and imploring viewers to buy more pillows to support him, which boosts sales. He is planning to host his show from Mr. Lindell’s Minnesota factory in the coming weeks, he said.Susan Beachy More