Tax Time For A Dead Billionaire
Texas businessman Robert T. Brockman coughs up $750 million from beyond the grave.
This Week In Blunders – Dec. 21-27
“You don’t pay taxes — they take taxes.” – Chris Rock.
If a dead billionaire can roll in his grave, this is likely how accused tax dodger Robert T. Brockman spent the week after his estate agreed to pay $750 million in back taxes and penalties.
Brockman should be remembered as a pioneering automotive-software entrepreneur and an early backer of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, which boasts more than $100 billion in assets under management.
Instead, he goes down as a billionaire scofflaw who spent the final years of his life fighting what prosecutors called the biggest U.S. tax fraud case ever filed against a single individual.
Brockman died in 2022 at age 81 fighting criminal tax evasion and wire fraud charges. Prosecutors alleged that he hid more than $2 billion in income from the IRS through a dizzying array of offshore accounts, backdated records and encrypted communications.
Brockman, who’d lived in Houston and Pitkin County, Colo., reportedly had an anti-government streak and claimed the IRS was corrupt as he donated to Republican causes.
Brockman was among the many wealthy sneaks listed in the Pandora Papers, a massive document leak to journalists in 2021 that exposed the secret bank bank accounts of hundreds of politicians, business people and celebrities around the globe.
His compadre, Vista’s billionaire CEO Robert Smith, reached a $140 million settlement in 2020 to end a criminal tax probe into his alleged tax-dodging, The Wall Street Journal reported.
And adding to this tragic tale of iron-willed idiocy, Brockman’s tax advisor died by suicide the night before his own trial.
In the end, there’s no sense putting a dead guy on trial, but the IRS will still want its due.
The agency had been gunning for $1.4 billion from Brockman’s estate, but settled for $750 million. It’s unclear, however, how much interest the estate will have to pay on that amount. And it marks an ignoble defeat for a billionaire who fought taxes for most of his life.
We all hate taxes and many of us will do everything legally possible to minimize them. But what is it with guys who don’t want to give anything back to the country that helped make them so rich? And what is it with our system that let’s so many of them get away with it?
R.I.P. Robert Brockman. Rest In Penalties.
It’s a bear market for JPMorgan Chase
Can it get any more humiliating for JPMorgan Chase?
First, a young charlatan named Charlie Javice rips them off for $175 million by selling them a bogus internet startup. Then they have to pay for her criminal defense thanks to the contract language int he deal they struck with her. Then Javice’s criminal defense lawyers started billing the bank for luxury hotels, upscale restaurant meals, first-class air fares, and a dizzying array of incidentals, including cellulite cream for their flabby asses.
Read More:
JPMorgan Chase Can Check Their Butts (Business Blunders)
JPMorgan Chumps (Business Blunders)
So far, lawyers for Javice and her convicted co-executive Oliver Amar have billed JPMorgan Chase for $142 million.
Javice was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in September, but she remains free on bail pending her appeal. And guess who is paying for her appeal?
Yes, the defense lawyers in this case are now on track to bag even more than the defendants they couldn’t keep out of prison.
This week we learned they even had the audacity to bill JPMorgan Chase for $529 worth of gummy bears. (Hey, there are 147 lawyers to feed on Javice’s case.)
Of course, the bank is fighting the charges. But this is the nation’s largest bank, and it’s unfortunately a victim of its own foolish deal making. A judge ruled it has to keep paying these bills through the appeals process, as per the agreement.
Chew on that, JPMorgan Chase. And just be glad they didn’t bill you for gummy worms.
Is Oracle an AI omen?
Oracle stock has plunged 43% from the all-time high it reached in September on AI spending euphoria.
Count this as an early sign that if left unchecked, the race to build out data centers for our new algorithmic overlords could spawn the next great financial crisis before it wipes out humanity altogether. (Hyperbole? Let’s hope.)
CNBC notes this is Oracle’s biggest face plant since 2001 – which you may recall was the dot.com era. It also puts a speed bump in founder Larry Ellison’s path to becoming one of the world’s first trillionaires.
Oracle had been among the narrow slice of U.S. companies propelling the stock market to its current all-time highs, but suddenly investors fear it may accumulate debt faster than it grows the revenues needed to service it.
This is what happened in the dot com era and it happened again with the rollout of fiber-optic cable just before the 2008 financial crisis. We’re not there yet. And at least for now we have plunging Oracle stock to inspire sanity.
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