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September 29, 2023

New Jersey Attorney Pleaded Guilty for Stealing from His IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program Clients

On September 15, 2023, District of New Jersey, James R. Lisa pleaded guilty to attempting to interfere with the administration of the internal revenue laws, aggravated identity theft, failure to file an individual income tax return, and two counts of wire fraud.

In 2014, Lisa was retained by a family to help repatriate millions of dollars that had been transferred by other family members to offshore bank accounts decades earlier. Lisa was also retained to help resolve the tax issues related to the repatriation of the funds. In 2015, Lisa successfully repatriated more than $6 million of the family’s funds, but falsely advised the family that the funds remained offshore. In 2017, Lisa provided $4 million of the repatriated funds to the family but continued to falsely represent that the remaining $2 million remained beyond his control.

Lisa falsely told the family that he successfully resolved the tax implications of repatriating the funds. In 2016, Lisa sent the family a fraudulent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Closing Agreement reflecting an agreement for the family to pay $3 million as a 50 percent penalty for the repatriated funds. In 2018, Lisa sent the family another fraudulent closing agreement reflecting an agreement for the family to pay $2 million as a penalty because only $4 million was purportedly repatriated. In fact, the IRS never entered into these agreements and the IRS employees who purportedly signed the documents never did so.

Further, while on pretrial release Lisa committed wire fraud when he applied for a loan. Lisa caused the creation and submission of a fraudulent document so that the lender would approve the loan. Lisa additionally admitted that he failed to file individual income tax returns for tax years 2015 through 2022, and as a result, caused a tax revenue loss to the IRS of at least $550,000.

Source:  The facts in this case narrative come from the following publicly available documents: D.N.J., Plea Agr., filed Sept. 15, 2023; and D.N.J., Superseding Information, filed Sept. 15, 2023.