Good timing for a message-sending tax fraud sentence!?!

As detailed in this AP article, a federal district judge “saying he wanted to send a message to “quick-buck artists,” handed down stiff sentences Wednesday to two former executives and a lawyer with accounting firm KPMG for helping rich people evade more than a billion dollars in taxes.”  Here are more details:

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced former KPMG executive John Larson to more than 10 years in prison; a fellow executive, Robert Pfaff, received more than eight years. 

The judge said Larson, 57, and Pfaff, 58, were “centrally involved” in the brazen tax shelter scheme “that didn’t pass the smell test from Day 1.” He gave lawyer Raymond Ruble, 63, a term of 6 1/2 years in prison.  The judge said he hoped the sentences “will say to quick-buck artists, ‘Not so fast.'”

The men were convicted in December of multiple counts of tax evasion.  The government alleged they used tax shelters marketed by KPMG LLP to help wealthy clients make it appear they sustained large tax-deductible losses by getting loans for business ventures when they had not.

I do not know if this sentencing was consciously scheduled to come only two weeks before federal income taxes are due, but it does seem like an especially good time to send a message to would-be tax cheats.