ATLANTA — An Atlanta attorney has now learned how long he will be in prison for his involvement in a tax scheme.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Vi Bui was an attorney at Atlanta-based company, Sinnott & Co.
According to court documents, from the beginning of 2012 to May 2020, Bui was involved in a scheme to swindle 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.
In 2024, Fisher and Sinnott were convicted for their involvement in the scheme and were sentenced to 25 and 23 years in prison.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Man charged with stabbing, suffocating GA family of 4 to death
- Shooting at GA graduation, prom after-party that injured 2 teens started over cellphone charger
- Kemp signs bill that could make Fulton County residents foot the bill for Trump’s GA legal fees
On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that Bui was sentenced to 16 months.
Officials said, the conspirators created partnerships to purchase land and land-owning companies and then donated conservation easements over that land or the land itself. Appraisers generated fake 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 fake tax deduction flowing to the wealthy clients who purchased units in the partnership.
According to the DOJ, when investigators conducted an undercover operation in 2018, Bui, believing that the IRS was auditing an individual’s tax returns, prepared fake 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.
Authorities said Bui earned a considereable income for his role in the illegal scheme. He also used the false tax shelters to evade his own taxes, filing fake personal tax returns from 2013 through 2018 that claimed false tax deductions from the syndicated conservation easement tax shelters.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
As part of his prison sentence, Bui is ordered to serve one year of supervised release and pay $8,250,244 in restitution to the IRS.