A Fresno woman will spend a couple years behind bars for tax evasion in relation to her husband’s orthodontics practice.
She also was ordered to forfeit her Van Ness mansion and BMW.
The big picture: Pilar Rose was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday for tax evasion and obstructing an IRS audit.
- She was ordered to forfeit over $2.5 million in proceeds that came from the sale of the mansion and vehicle, which had been seized by federal authorities.
Driving the news: From 2012 though 2015, Rose prepared false financial statements for her husband’s orthodontics practice that significantly underreported profits.
- Rose evaded more than $870,000 in federal taxes that they owed.
- In 2016, Rose obstructed an IRS audit of their taxes and altered hundreds of checks that were for their nondeductible personal expenses, including their mortgage, utilities, landscaping, pool cleaning, cars, credit cards and children’s college tuition. That made it appear as though the checks were for deductible business expenses.
- Along with the altered checks, Rose created false financial statements for her husband’s orthodontics practice to match the checks and provided them and false financial statements to the IRS auditors to try to avoid paying the federal taxes that they actually owed.
Go deeper: Rose sought a $1.5 million home mortgage refinance loan for their Van Ness mansion in June 2015.
- In order to assure the bank of their creditworthiness, Rose submitted copies of their federal tax returns that showed significantly greater income than what was reported, which led to the bank to decline the loan.
- One month later, Rose applied to a second bank for a $1.475 million refinance and represented that their bank accounts had over $250,000 when they actually had less than $3,000. The second bank approved the loan.
- Rose also purchased a new BMW for around $90,000 in September 2017, financing $65,000 of the total cost through a loan from a third bank. She represented that she was an attorney who made more than $600,000 in the application when she was not actually an attorney. Rose also used the Social Security number of one of her husband’s former dental school classmates.
