Action-hero Wesley Snipes’ last-minute attempt to settle his tax debt doesn’t seem to have worked.
Pending appeal, it looks as if the star of “Demolition Man” and other movies is going to prison for three years.
Shortly before he was to be sentenced Thursday on three misdemeanor counts related to his failure to file taxes, Snipes’ lawyers tried to give Judge William Terrell Hodges of Federal District Court in Florida three checks totaling $5 million toward his accumulated tax bill of $17 million.
Hodges said he didn’t have the authority to accept the checks, which eventually ended up in the hands of an Internal Revenue Service agent.
Despite the payment, Hodges give Snipes the maximum sentence, one-year in prison for each count, to be served consecutively, plus another year of probation. Snipes remains free on bail. His lawyers have said he will appeal.
According to The Associated Press, Hodges said that Snipes had shown “a history of contempt over a period of time” in not paying his taxes.
“In my mind these are serious crimes, albeit misdemeanors,” Hodges added.
In February, a jury acquitted Snipes of the felony charges of fraud and conspiracy. It also acquitted him on three of the six misdemeanor charges he faced.
Encouraged by the group, American Rights Litigators, Snipes had filed no tax returns for the years 1999 through 2004 even though he made an estimated $38 million during this period.
He also sought refunds of a little more than $4 million on his 1996 taxes and almost $7.4 million on his 1997 taxes.
At trial, Snipes’ attorneys said he acted on bad advice from his co-defendants, Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of American Rights Litigators, and Douglas Rosile, a certified public accountant who had lost his license to practice in Ohio and Florida.
Both Kahn and Rosile were convicted on the felony charges. Hodges sentenced Kahn to 10 years in prison and Rosile to four and a half years.
In a prepared statement to the court that took nearly 10 minutes, Snipes said, “I’m very sorry for my mistakes. I acknowledge that I have failed myself and others.”
As reported in The New York Times, O’Neill, the lead prosecutor on the case, did not seem convinced by Snipes’ words.
“He never said he didn’t pay his taxes or show any remorse for it,” O’Neill said.
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