A St. Louis attorney, Michael Kohn, convicted alongside his daughter and a North Carolina insurance agent, David Shane Simmons, requested acquittal on Tuesday in their $4 million tax fraud case. They argued that the supposedly false statements on tax returns were actually accurate.
Michael Kohn Tax Fraud Case: Legal Motions Filed
In separate motions in the Western District of North Carolina, Michael Kohn and David Shane Simmons sought to overturn their guilty verdicts for conspiring to defraud the federal government and aiding in the filing of false tax returns. Alternatively, they requested a new trial, citing alleged flaws in the prosecution’s case that they claim biased the jury.
The core of the case involved the alleged filing of false tax returns. However, Kohn and Simmons argued that the line numbers for total income on these returns, which prosecutors claimed were false, were actually correct.
“The fatal problem for the government’s case as to these counts is that the representations on the allegedly false line numbers are literally true,” Kohn and Simmons stated in their briefs.
Trial Background and Verdict
Michael Kohn, founding partner of The Kohn Partnership LLC, was found guilty after a nine-day trial in April. He faced one count of conspiring to defraud the government and 16 counts of aiding in the filing of false tax returns. His daughter, Catherine Elizabeth Chollet, a junior partner at the firm, was convicted of the same conspiracy charge and 13 counts of aiding in the filing of false tax returns.
