You can be forgiven for having no clue that actor Wesley Snipes is facing hard time in prison for tax evasion. But I suspect he is more distressed that so few people know about his plight than he is about his pending rendezvous behind bars.
Such are the egos of celebrities that Snipes probably resents the fact that the paparazzi are spending far more time following the antics of Britney Spears than the goings-on at his trial…
To prison he will surely go. Because prosecutors allege, and Snipes does not deny, that he filed a false claim for a $7-million tax refund, moved tens of millions of untaxed dollars offshore, and gave the government three bounced checks totaling $14 million to cover some of the taxes owed…
His conviction, which I expect the jury to announce later today or tomorrow, should serve as a reminder that only big corporations can get away with paying no taxes. And I have just two words for anyone who is inclined to buy his line about being prosecuted because he’s black: Leona Hemsley!
(Actor Wesley Snipes takes on IRS in dumbest role of his life, The iPINIONS Journal, January 30, 2008)
Given these excerpts from my commentary on his January 2008 trial, it follows that I was not at all surprised back then when Snipes was duly convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. Nor was I surprised this past Friday when the court rejected his appeal, in which he claimed that the sentence imposed was “unreasonable”.
Snipes engaged in a decade-long ‘campaign of criminal tax conduct combining brazen defiance with insidious concealment’ that amounted to a $15 million evasion and $41 million in ‘intended harm’ to the US Treasury.
(From the prosecutors’ memo to court calling for the maximum three-year sentence to be imposed)
In fact, the arrogance Snipes displayed while refusing to pay his taxes was so egregious that instead of arousing compassion, character references from a cast of Hollywood stars, including Denzel Washington and Woody Harrelson, may have only incited indignation in the sentencing judge.
What must be particularly galling to Snipes, however, is that another celebutart, Lindsay Lohan, is now hogging media coverage. Because he knows that there will be no media vigil until he reports (in a few weeks) to serve his three years in prison the way there was for Lindsay until she reported to yesterday to serve her 90 days in jail. Not to mention that she will only have to serve about a quarter of her time (around 23 days), while he will have to serve his full three years.
Lindsay of course is going to the pokey for committing a spree of violations while on probation stemming from a 2007 drug case. These included, most notoriously, traveling to Cannes earlier this year, where she partied like a girl gone wild and then gave a dog-ate-my-homework excuse by claiming that she could not make it back in time for one of her court-mandated alcohol treatment classes because somebody stole her passport.
But Snipes shouldn’t feel too bad about being ignored. After all, nothing demonstrates the dumbing down of our celebrity-obsessed culture quite like the fact that a no-talent like Paris Hilton routinely gets more media coverage than a talent like Scarlett Johansson.
Related commentaries:
Snipes takes on IRS
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