A former New York art consultant, Lacy Doyle hid more than $3.7 million of her late father’s estate in Swiss bank accounts. On Monday, she avoided prison for tax evasion, after a United States judge in Manhattan sentenced Doyle to four years’ probation, with eight months of home confinement, which rejected the government’s request to send her off to jail for a few months.
The former art consultant with the Museum of Modern Art in the 1980s pleaded guilty to one of the three felony charges she faced. She was accused of failing to disclose that she hid $3.7 million in an undeclared bank account with Credit Suisse AG in Switzerland.
Doyle was appointed executor of her father’s estate, after he passed away in 2003. According to the U.S. Advised by Singenberger, she then falsely claimed her father’s estate was under $1 million and instead held her secret inheritance in a Credit Suisse account under her own name, according to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.
In 2006, Doyle once again opened an undeclared bank account in the name of a sham foundation “Gestino Stiftung,” allegedly formed under Lichtenstein laws, in which she transferred her funds to. The U.S. reports that byMay of 2015, the account contained assets of more than $5 million. The sham foundation was moved from Lichtenstein to Panama in 2010, prosecutors said.
Singenberger was indicted by the U.S. in 2011 for conspiring with U.S. taxpayers to evade U.S. income taxes. Though he remains at large, federal prosecutors in Manhattan, said in 2013 that his errant mailing, which included clients’ names, residences, their Swiss banks and the ways they hid accounts from the IRS – were intercepted, leading success of federal charges.
Bloomberg reports that Doyle agreed to pay restitution for the unpaid U.S. income taxes of at least $10,254. She faces a stipulated sentencing range of six to 12 months in prison and a fine of up to $20,000, according to her plea agreement.