Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank LTD. Admits Its Employees Helped U.S.Taxpayers Conceal Income and Assets

Bank Admits for Years It Opened and Maintained Customer Accounts in Violation of Agreement with the Internal Revenue Service; Agrees to Pay $195 Million as Part of a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the Justice Department

Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank Ltd., (Mizrahi-Tefahot) and its subsidiaries, United Mizrahi Bank (Switzerland) Ltd. (UMBS) and Mizrahi Tefahot Trust Company Ltd. (Mizrahi Trust Company), entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the Department of Justice filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, First Assistant United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison, and Chief Don Fort for Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. As part of the agreement, Mizrahi-Tefahot will pay $195 million to the United States.

Mizrahi-Tefahot is one of Israel’s largest banks, with more than 4,000 employees, and is publicly traded on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange. During the relevant period of criminal activity, Mizrahi-Tefahot had branches in Los Angeles, California, the Cayman Islands, and London, England. In 2014, the Cayman Islands branch surrendered its license and was closed. UMBS, a subsidiary of Mizrahi-Tefahot, had one branch in Zurich, Switzerland. Mizrahi Trust Company, a fully owned subsidiary of Mizrahi-Tefahot, operated under the regulatory authority of the Bank of Israel. Collectively, Mizrahi-Tefahot, UMBS, and Mizrahi Trust Company provided private banking, wealth management, and financial services to high-net-worth individuals and entities around the world, including U.S. citizens, resident aliens and permanent residents.

“Mizrahi-Tefahot’s admission of guilt and agreement with the United States to pay significant penalties and pay over the fees earned from knowingly assisting tax evading Americans reflects the continuing efforts of the Tax Division to end the criminal role of international financial institutions in perpetuating offshore tax fraud,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman. “A financial institution is not a faceless entity, but is the embodiment of the acts of its bankers, relationship managers and all employees. When a bank’s employees, at any level, facilitate U.S. tax fraud, the bank facilitates tax fraud and will be held responsible.”

“For over a decade, this Israeli bank, through its employees, engaged in conduct designed to hide its clients’ funds so they could avoid paying U.S. income taxes,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison, “Mizrahi-Tefahot solicited customers in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities to open offshore accounts with the hope they would never be linked to the American clients. As a result of this criminal conduct, the bank will surrender fees it earned, repay the United States for lost tax revenue, and pay a substantial fine.”

“Today’s announcement sends a clear message that banks, who promote the use of offshore tax schemes against the United States, will be held accountable and face substantial fines and penalties,” said Don Fort, Chief, IRS-Criminal Investigation. “Any financial institution – no matter where it operates – will be held accountable if it helps U.S. residents dodge their tax responsibilities. This agreement with Mizrahi-Tefahot is the latest notice to American taxpayers, who might flout the law, that we can and will uncover your hidden assets.”

In the DPA and related court documents, Mizrahi-Tefahot admitted that from 2002 until 2012 the actions of its bankers, relationship managers, and other employees defrauded the United States and specifically the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with respect to taxes by conspiring with U.S. taxpayer-customers and others. Mizrahi-Tefahot employees’ acts of opening and maintaining bank accounts in Israel and elsewhere around the world and violating Mizrahi-Tefahot’s Qualified Intermediary Agreement (QI Agreement) with the IRS enabled U.S. taxpayers to hide income and assets from the IRS.

According to the filed statement of facts and the DPA, these employees took steps to assist U.S. customers in concealing their ownership and control of assets and funds held at Mizrahi-Tefahot, Mizrahi Trust Company and UMBS, which enabled those U.S. customer-taxpayers to evade their U.S. tax obligations, including:

Assisting and referring U.S. customers to professionals to open and ma

FULL here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/mizrahi-tefahot-bank-ltd-admits-its-employees-helped-ustaxpayers-conceal-income-and-assets

Lumber Liquidators Enters into Corporate Resolution for Securities Fraud and Agrees to Pay $33 Million Penalty

Resolution Comes after Company Lied to Investors Following March 2015 “60 Minutes” Episode

Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc. (Lumber Liquidators) has agreed to pay a total penalty of $33 million for filing a materially false and misleading statement to investors regarding the sale of its laminate flooring from China to its customers in the United States.

Lumber Liquidators, a public corporation headquartered in Toano, Virginia, and one of the largest retailers of flooring products in the United States, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in connection with a criminal information filed today in the Eastern District of Virginia charging the company with securities fraud. The case was primarily focused on the fact that Lumber Liquidators knowingly filed a false and misleading statement to investors broadly denying the allegations featured in a March 2015 episode of 60 Minutes, and affirming that the company complied with California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia, Special Agent in Charge David W. Archey of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Kelly R. Jackson of IRS-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Washington, D.C. Field Office and Inspector in Charge Peter R. Rendina of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Washington Division, made the announcement.

“Lumber Liquidators lied to investors and to the public about its compliance with formaldehyde regulations for the flooring it sold – all to protect its stock price,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski. “False and misleading financial reports undermine the integrity of our securities markets and harm investors. The Department and our law enforcement partners are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that those who commit securities fraud are held accountable.”

“This resolution holds Lumber Liquidators accountable for misleading the investing public,” said U.S. Attorney Terwilliger. “It also recognizes that the company has cooperated with the government's investigation, completely replaced its senior executive team, and installed experienced executives who have displayed a commitment to building an ethical corporate culture. We will continue to ensure that market participants can trust information communicated by public companies when making investment decisions. My thanks to our prosecutorial team and our investigative partners for their outstanding work on this case.”

“This penalty should serve as a warning to other corporations who seek to mislead investors,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Archey. “FBI Richmond is grateful for the commitment to this case of its partners at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, the IRS Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.”

FULL here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/lumber-liquidators-enters-corporate-resolution-securities-fraud-and-agrees-pay-33-million

If you've bought flooring from Lumber Liquidators beware..

As Mueller Reaches His Inevitable Conclusion, Trump Is Primed to Respond

Over the next several weeks, you’re going to see desperate people struggling to explain why—after a two-year exhaustive investigation—special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

These people will bend over backward in an effort to not swallow the bitterest of bitter pills: That Donald Trump won the election over Hillary Clinton fair and square. He did not, in fact, ‘cheat’ with Russian help; instead, Trump beat Clinton all on his own.

For more than two years, Democrats and the mainstream media have peddled what I refer to as “The Collusion Delusion” to the American public. And the bill for all that deliberate peddling of fake news is about to come due.

Many fake news media outlets literally picked Trump-Russia collusion as the hill to die on. They don’t have enough credibility left to pay this bill —not even close.

As the Trump-Russia collusion narrative is coming to an end, and Democrats are desperately making an attempt to shift focus to new House investigations, we can expect Trump’s counterassault to begin.

While Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) are wildly waving their empty, clenched fists and claiming that they have mountains of evidence proving crimes by Trump, nobody is going to be paying any attention. Trump’s counterassault is literally going to grab the nation’s attention and not let go.

Mueller’s Conclusion Was Inevitable

There was never a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy for Mueller and his crack team of highly motivated political prosecutors to find because–are you sitting down?—it never existed.

As much as this will blow the minds of those who drank deeply of the sweet, sweet collusion Kool-Aid—being dispensed by the gallon via fake news leaks in the mainstream media for the past couple of years—President Trump has, in fact, been telling the truth on his Twitter account and in numerous interviews, in which he repeatedly insisted there was no collusion and that the Mueller probe was a “witch hunt.”

With both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz looking over their shoulders, the chance that Mueller and his team would get creative and try to manufacture a case for collusion, after they realized they would never be able to make a real case, was always nonsense.

It must be remembered that it was demonstrated to Mueller and his team very early on that they were being watched and that parallel investigations into Spygate were going on at the same time. That demonstration involved two members of Mueller’s newly formed team being removed after the DOJ Inspector General uncovered a series of highly incriminating text messages.

Although Rosenstein gave Mueller’s team a huge scope within which to search, the outcome of that search was never in doubt, as long as Mueller and his team were kept honest. And they were kept honest. You can thank Rosenstein for that.

Why Trump Held Back Declassification

Trump has had to wait until Mueller showed all his cards. All the drama you are seeing about Mueller’s results being hidden from the public are nonsense. Trump and his administration want that report released to demonstrate there was no Russia collusion or any other crimes.

Trump masterfully trolled the Democrats and the media into loudly and repeatedly demanding that Mueller’s full report be made public. And he had them doing that even before they realized that Mueller was, in fact, about to vindicate what Trump has been saying all along, that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.

What’s the loudest talking point the Democrats, the DNC Media, and Never Trumpers would have had if Trump didn’t wait until Mueller was finished to launch his counteroffensive against the Spygate plotters?

They would have said: “Trump is ‘interfering’ with and ‘obstructing’ the Mueller special counsel probe and he’s only going after these people to stop the evidence of his collusion with Russia and his other crimes from being found and made public!”

If Mueller ends his investigation and releases a final report exhaustively detailing how he didn’t find any Trump-Russia collusion, they have lost that talking point forever.

That’s why Trump waited. Nobody is going to be able to say with a straight face that Trump was pushing the DOJ into going after the people who were working hard to expose his Russian collusion. That talking-point narrative is now more dead than Elvis.

Full here: https://www.theepochtimes.com/as-mueller-reaches-his-inevitable-conclusion-trump-is-primed-to-respond_2835031.html

BREAKING: ACTRESS FELICITY HUFFMAN REPORTEDLY ARRESTED BY FBI AGENTS WITH THEIR GUNS DRAWN

Actress Felicity Huffman was reportedly arrested by FBI agents with their guns drawn during her arrest for involvement in a college admissions scheme.

At least seven agents reportedly approached her home in Hollywood Hills with their weapons drawn while ordering the actress to come outside. Huffman reportedly knew that she was a target of the federal investigation into bribery before the arrest came.

The agents reportedly drew their weapons as a precaution due to her knowledge of the investigation. Huffman was taken to a federal building where she was processed. She has been indicted for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

https://newsbreakinglive.com/2019/03/12/breaking-actress-felicity-huffman-reportedly-arrested-by-fbi-agents-with-their-guns-drawn/

Clinton can't help you now bitch!!