A New York art consultant pled guilty to hiding $3.7 million overseas.
Lacy Doyle, who served as an art consultant to the Museum of Modern Art in the 1980s, admitted Thursday she hid $3.7 million in inheritance from the taxman by stashing it in an undeclared overseas account. After her father died in 2003, Doyle lied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), telling them her father’s estate was valued under $1 million, Bloomberg reported. Then, under the advice of Swiss money manager Beda Singenberger, Doyle opened a Lichtenstein bank account in the name of a sham foundation in 2006, storing the funds there before moving them to Panama in 2010.
The scheme unraveled entirely by accident when Singenberger mistakenly mailed a complete list of his American clients, including how they evaded taxes, to the U.S., where authorities intercepted the list. That led to 60 prosecutions against individuals who collectively hid $184 million from the IRS, putting “a lot of people in the frying pan," a lawyer representing one of Singenberger’s clients told The Guardian. Singenberger remains at large, while Doyle was charged with multiple felony counts in 2016. Under the terms of her guilty plea, which only covers one of three felony charges, Doyle will pay at least $10,000 in tax restitution, a fine of no more than $20,000 and spend between six and 12 months in prison.