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00-3032 U.S. v. Ronald Magsino Ytem

By: dmc-admin//July 2, 2001//

00-3032 U.S. v. Ronald Magsino Ytem

By: dmc-admin//July 2, 2001//

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“[T]here is plenty of … circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s

intent to avoid tax. As in Guidry, the defendant was an accountant,

moreover an experienced one; he personally prepared the fraudulent tax

return; the sums taken were large (they amounted to 75 percent of his

total income during the period of the embezzlement), and (the weakest

bit of evidence) he used the money for ordinary expenses, the sort of

thing people usually defray from taxable income. Furthermore, the fact

that illegal income is taxable is widely known, even among lay people.

Everyone knows that Al Capone, for example, was nailed for income-tax

evasion, not for the bootlegging, loan-sharking, extortion, and

prostitution that generated the income. Accountants know better than

anyone except tax lawyers that illegal income is taxable. “[T]he jury

had to choose between two hypotheses. One was that the defendant knew

that embezzled income is taxable. The other was that he thought

embezzled income tax-free – a token of the government’s affection for

embezzlers and other thieves. The former hypothesis was, in the

circumstances, far more likely than the latter. That is enough to compel

affirmance.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from

the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois,

Holderman, J., Posner, J.

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