United States v. Sorensen

From 2002 to 2007, Defendant-appellant Jerold Sorensen, an oral surgeon in California, concealed his income from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and underpaid his income taxes by more than $1.5 million. He used a “pure trust” scheme, peddled by Financial Fortress Associates (“FFA”), in which he deposited his dental income into these trusts without reporting all of it to the IRS as income. Over the years, he also retitled valuable assets in the trusts’ names. In 2013, after a series of proffers, the government charged him with violating 26 U.S.C. 7212(a) for corruptly endeavoring to obstruct and impede the due administration of the internal-revenue laws. A jury convicted him of the charged offense. On appeal, Sorensen argued his conduct amounted to evading taxes so it was exclusively punishable under a different statute; that the prosecution misstated evidence in its closing rebuttal argument; and (7) cumulative error. Furthermore, he argued the district court erred: (2) by refusing his offered jury instruction requiring knowledge of illegality; (3) by giving the government’s deliberate-ignorance instruction; (4) by instructing the jury that it could convict on any one means alleged in the indictment; and (5) by refusing to allow him to provide certain testimony from a witness in surrebuttal. Finding no merit to any of these contentions, the Tenth Circuit affirmed Sorensen's conviction. View "United States v. Sorensen" on Justia Law