A Miami man pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring with others to defraud the United States by concealing millions of dollars in assets and income in undisclosed Swiss bank accounts.
According to court documents and statements made in court, between 1985 and 2020, Dan Rotta hid more than $20 million in assets in dozens of secret Swiss accounts at five different Swiss banks, including UBS, Credit Suisse, Bank Bonhôte, and Bank Julius Baer. The accounts were held in his own name, in the names of sham structures, and, in one instance, a pseudonym. Over the years, Rotta earned tens of millions of dollars of income from these assets that he did not report on his tax returns and that he used to fund his lavish lifestyle. He caused a substantial tax loss to the IRS.
Rotta employed increasingly elaborate schemes to keep his accounts hidden. Over the years, he kept his accounts open, in part, by falsely representing that he was not a U.S. citizen, leveraging his Brazilian citizenship to claim he was a Brazilian citizen residing in Brazil.
Starting in 2008, after it was reported publicly that UBS and its bankers were under criminal investigation for helping U.S. taxpayers evade their taxes, Rotta closed his UBS account and moved his funds to Credit Suisse and Bank Bonhôte.
In 2011, after the IRS obtained records related to one of Rotta’s Swiss accounts, Rotta nominally changed the documentation of his accounts at Credit Suisse and Bank Bonhôte to make it appear that his co-conspirator, a Brazilian national and resident, owned the assets in the accounts. Despite the change, Rotta continued to control the assets and transferred millions of dollars out of those accounts for his use.
Shortly after Rotta changed the account documentation, the IRS began auditing Rotta. During the audit, Rotta falsely denied that he owned the assets in the foreign financial accounts and, instead, claimed that the millions of dollars he withdrew from the accounts were non-taxable loans from foreign nationals. Rotta provided the IRS with fake promissory notes and false affidavits from the foreign nationals to corroborate his claims. During the audit, Rotta continued to use the funds in his foreign accounts to fund his lifestyle in the United States, but to conceal his use of the funds from the IRS, he often routed transfers from his foreign accounts through nominee accounts and attorney trust fund accounts in the United States.
The IRS did not believe Rotta’s story and assessed millions of dollars of additional taxes as well as penalties and interest against him. Rotta sought to reverse the assessments by filing a false petition in U.S. Tax Court. In that petition, Rotta, through his attorney, falsely denied having any foreign accounts and attached fictitious loan documents. Furthermore, the nominee account owners traveled to the United States to retell the false loan story to IRS attorneys.
In 2017, after Rotta presented evidence that the purported loans had been repaid, the IRS reversed the deficiencies and agreed that Rotta owed no additional tax. Unbeknownst to the IRS, however, the “loan repayments” were fake: the funds that Rotta purportedly repaid went back into accounts that Rotta controlled shortly after the IRS dismissed the suit. Also as part of the conspiracy, Rotta had his U.S.-based attorneys create sham trust structures that he used to transfer his assets to the United States without alerting the IRS. On paper, it appeared that Rotta’s co-conspirator funded the trusts for Rotta’s benefit. In reality, Rotta funded the trusts with transfers from Swiss accounts.
In 2019, Rotta became aware that the IRS would receive additional account records from Switzerland that contradicted the false claims that he had previously made. To avoid criminal liability, Rotta applied to participate in the IRS’s voluntary disclosure practice. Under that practice, taxpayers who failed to comply with their tax and reporting obligations can make timely, accurate, and complete disclosures of their conduct, which may offer a path to resolve their non-compliance and limit their criminal exposure. Rotta made false statements in his submission, including falsely claiming that the assets in the Swiss accounts mostly belonged to others, and that any funds provided to Rotta were non-taxable gifts. Rotta also claimed that the nominee account owner gifted Rotta money because the nominee had no children to benefit from the funds. In fact, the nominee had two children.
Rotta is scheduled to be sentenced on June 4. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Karen E. Kelly of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, U.S. Attorney Hayden O’Byrne for the Southern District of Florida, and Executive Special Agent in Charge Kareem Carter of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI)’s Washington, D.C., Field Office made the announcement.
Special Agents from IRS-CI’s International Tax & Financial Crimes specialty group, a team based out of Washington, D.C., and dedicated to uncovering international tax crimes, is investigating the case.
Senior Litigation Counsels Sean Beaty and Mark Daly and Trial Attorneys Patrick Elwell and William Montague of the Tax Division, as well as Senior Litigation Counsel Christopher J. Clark for the Southern District of Florida, are prosecuting the case.