May 22, 2007

DANVILLE DOCTOR PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRING TO DEFRAUD THE IRS

Agrees to pay back more than $900,000

SAN FRANCISCO – United States Attorney Scott N. Schools announced that Leroy Albert Lewis pleaded guilty last Friday to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding and impairing the IRS in the ascertainment and collection of income tax. This guilty plea is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation.

Mr. Lewis, of Danville, was indicted by a federal Grand Jury on October 6, 2005. He was charged with one count of conspiracy in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. § 371 and four counts of tax evasion in violation of Title 26 U.S.C. § 7201. Under the plea agreement, Mr. Lewis pled guilty to one count of conspiracy.

According to the indictment, for more than 10 years, Mr. Lewis, an oral surgeon, attempted to evade tax on income he earned from his medical practice. Around 1995, he joined an organization based in Denver, called Tower Executive Resources, Ltd. (Tower). Tower assisted its members to evade federal income taxes, in part by providing a false invoicing scheme to offset income the members’ businesses earned. Mr. Lewis’ medical practice paid funds to Tower in exchange for bogus Tower invoices to substantiate huge false business expenses Mr. Lewis deducted on the medical practice’s returns. Tower then deposited the bulk of those funds into an offshore bank account, which Mr. Lewis controlled. Over the years covered by the indictment, Mr. Lewis transferred substantial amounts of untaxed income from his medical practice to the offshore bank account using the Tower scheme. The indictment also alleges that Mr. Lewis attempted to evade tax on a substantial amount of income generated from the sale of his medical practice in 1998 using a false option agreement crafted by Tower. In pleading guilty, Mr. Lewis admitted to this conduct.

Mr. Lewis’ son, Roy Lewis, a dentist and also a member of Tower, was also charged in the same indictment. Roy Lewis also used the Tower false invoicing scheme to conceal the transfer of untaxed income from his dental practice to an offshore bank account to evade federal income tax. On August 10, 2006, after a three-week jury trial, he was convicted of conspiring to defraud the United States and evading his income taxes for 1998 through 2001. On February 23, 2007, Roy Lewis was sentenced to serve 24 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He is currently
serving out that sentence.