Milwaukee Court Commissioner appears in court on tax fraud charges

Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Geneva McKinley, who is charged with tax fraud, made her first appearance in court Monday.

She appeared in Dane County Circuit Court on two counts of filing false and fraudulent income tax returns.  She was ordered to be booked and released at the hearing.

A status conference is scheduled for Aug. 15, before Judge Julie Genovese.

Each charge of filing false and fraudulent income tax returns is a class H felony, and McKinley faces up to six years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both, for each of the two charges, according to a news release from Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office.

According to the complaint, McKinley filed income tax returns for the 2006 and 2007 tax years on the same date — May 28, 2008.

McKinley failed to report rental income she received each year on commercial real estate property she owned, according to the complaint.

It also alleges that McKinley failed to report attorney’s fees she was paid for private legal work in 2006, prior to becoming a court commissioner. For the two years combined, McKinley reported only $19,391 in adjusted gross income, when her actual adjusted gross income should have been reported as more than $135,000.