Atlanta Attorney Sentenced in Syndicated Conservation Easement Tax Scheme
A Georgia attorney was sentenced today to 16 months in prison for obstructing the IRS in connection with his participation in the promotion of abusive syndicated conservation easement tax shelters.
The following is according to court documents and statements made in court: Vi Bui was an attorney and partner at Sinnott & Co., an Atlanta-based company. Beginning at least in 2012 and continuing through at least May 2020, Bui participated in a scheme to defraud the IRS by organizing, marketing, implementing, and selling illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters created and organized by co-conspirators Jack Fisher, James Sinnott, and others. Fisher and Sinnott were convicted at trial for their involvement in the scheme, and in January 2024, they were sentenced to 25 and 23 years in prison, respectively.
The scheme entailed the creation of partnerships that purchased land and land-owning companies and then donated conservation easements over that land or the land itself. Appraisers generated fraudulent and inflated appraisals of the conservation easements. The partnerships then claimed a charitable contribution tax deduction based on the inflated value of the conservation easement, resulting in a fraudulent tax deduction flowing to the wealthy clients who purchased units in the partnership. Many of these clients joined the tax shelters after the donation of the interest in land and after the end of the relevant tax year. Bui knew that in order to make it appear that the participants had timely purchased their units in the tax shelters, Fisher, Sinnott, and others backdated and instructed others to backdate documents, including subscription agreements, checks, and other documents.
Bui anticipated that the syndicated conservation easement transactions would be audited. In order to deceive the IRS, Bui and others took steps to make the partnerships appear as legitimate real estate development companies. They created and disseminated lengthy documents disguising the true nature of the transaction, instituted sham “votes” for what to do with the land that the partnership owned despite knowing that outcome was predetermined, and falsified paperwork such as appraisals and subscription agreements.
In one instance, when investigators conducted an undercover operation in 2018, Bui, believing that the IRS was auditing an individual’s tax returns, prepared false documents related to a 2014 syndicated conservation easement tax shelter with the intent to make it appear that the documents were executed before the purported donation of the conservation easement in 2014 and before the 2014 tax returns had been filed.
Bui earned substantial income for his role in the illegal scheme. He also used the fraudulent tax shelters to evade his own taxes, filing false personal tax returns from 2013 through 2018 that claimed false tax deductions from the illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters.
In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. for the Northern District of Georgia ordered Bui to serve one year of supervised release and to pay $8,250,244 in total restitution to the IRS.
Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Karen E. Kelly of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg for the Northern District of Georgia made the announcement. They also thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina for their assistance in the investigation of this matter.
IRS Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case.
Senior Litigation Counsel Richard M. Rolwing, and Trial Attorneys Parker Tobin, Jessica Kraft, and Nicholas Schilling of the Tax Division prosecuted the case, with support from Assistant U.S. Attorney Samir Kaushal for the Northern District of Georgia.
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Source: Justice.gov
