Snipes faces eight counts in alleged tax fraud scheme

TAMPA -- Actor Wesley Snipes was indicted yesterday on eight counts of tax fraud, accused of trying to cheat the government out of nearly $12 million in false refund claims and not filing returns for six years.

Prosecutors said Snipes fraudulently claimed refunds totaling nearly $12 million in 1996 and 1997 on income taxes already paid. The star of the "Blade " trilogy and other films including "Jungle Fever " and "White Men Can't Jump " was also charged with failure to file returns from 1999 through 2004.

According to the indictment, Snipes had his taxes prepared by accountants with a history of filing false returns to reap payments for their clients. The firm American Rights Litigators would receive 20 percent of refunds from clients, according to the indictment.

``It's a conspiracy against the IRS, basically to harass the IRS, from doing its lawful job in term of collection of taxes," US Attorney Paul I. Perez said at a news conference.

If convicted of all the charges, Snipes could face 16 years in prison -- five years each on two conspiracy counts and one year each on six counts of failure to file income tax returns.

Snipes, 44, who had a home in Windermere near Orlando, Fla., has not been arrested because authorities don't know where he is, Perez said. Snipes's manager and attorney did not return phone messages.

The indictment said Snipes conspired with American Rights Litigators' founder Eddie Ray Kahn and tax preparer Douglas P. Rosile Sr. to file false refund claims based on a bogus argument that only income from foreign sources was subject to taxation. That included a claim for a $7.3 million refund for 1997, in which an amended tax return reported Snipes' s adjusted income as zero. The Justice Department sued Rosile in 2002 for allegedly filing bogus tax refund claims totaling more than $36 million on behalf of clients in 32 states. The suit is still pending. Snipes was not named as a defendant in that case, but the lawsuit said the preparer's largest claim was an amended income tax return filed on behalf of the actor and dated April 14, 2001. Rosile is in custody in Ocala, Fla., Perez said, and the third defendant named in the indictment, Kahn, is believed to be out of the country.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Madonna said yesterday she had acted according to the law in taking custody of a 1-year-old Malawian boy, responding for the first time to the fierce debate about the legality and morality of the planned adoption. The pop star's statement came after she was united with David Banda at her London mansion. Madonna said she hopes to make the adoption permanent following an 18-month evaluation period, imposed by Malawi authorities. ``We have gone about the adoption procedure according to the law, like anyone else who adopts a child. Reports to the contrary are totally inaccurate," Madonna said in the statement. She said she and her husband began the adoption process ``many months prior to our trip to Malawi," but she had not disclosed their intentions because she wished to keep the matter private. David, who has spent most of his life in an orphanage in poverty-stricken Malawi, arrived before dawn at Heathrow Airport aboard a flight from Johannesburg. He was bundled into a waiting Mercedes minivan in the arms of an aide, surrounded by airport officials and armed police officers. Photographers, reporters, and camera crews clustered in the street as the van arrived at the brick Victorian town house near London's Hyde Park that Madonna, 48, shares with her husband, director Guy Ritchie, daughter Lourdes, 9, and son Rocco, 6. Last week, Malawi's High Court granted Madonna and Ritchie an interim adoption order giving them custody of the boy for 18 months. The order waived a Malawian law requiring would-be parents to live in the country for a year while social welfare officers investigate their ability to care for a child. Human rights and child protection groups were challenging the custody order in court.

Bono testified again yesterday that a former U2 stylist stole and tried to sell band memorabilia, including his iconic Stetson cowboy hat from the ``Rattle and Hum" album cover. Bono was testifying at the start of an Irish High Court appeal over the band's 2002 lawsuit against fashion consultant Lola Cashman, who insists she received a range of gifts while advising U2 during the 1987-88 ``Joshua Tree" tour. Bono explained his sense of betrayal over Cashman, whom he described as an eccentric pain in the neck. Bono said he picked the Stetson, not Cashman. ``It's our stuff, she has it, and a lot more beside. We want our stuff back. We want her to stop selling it," he said.

The rapper Fabolous was shot early yesterday as he stood at a Manhattan parking garage, spurring a sequence of events that left him hospitalized and then under arrest. The rapper, whose legal name is John Jackson, had just left Justin's, a restaurant owned by Sean ``Diddy" Combs, with three friends when a gunman approached and opened fire, police said. Fabolous, 28, was hit in the thigh. He and his entourage jumped into a 2005 Dodge Magnum and fled, attracting the attention of police when they ran a red light. Officers stopped them and discovered two loaded guns in the vehicle, both of which were apparently unlicensed, police said. All four men were arrested, and charges were pending. The rapper was in police custody after being treated at Bellevue Hospital. Police were searching for the shooter.

Martha Stewart has pledged to donate $1 million to the emergency room where doctors stitched up her hand after a turkey-carving accident last December. Stewart said she received excellent care and wants to ``ensure that the region in which I live and the community, which has been so welcoming to me, has access to a superior medical facility," according to a news release issued yesterday by Northern Westchester Hospital in New York . Stewart visited the hospital after slicing her hand while carving a turkey in her Katonah home, about 4 four miles away. Stewart's pledge is conditional -- other donors must give $2 million by the end of the year before the Stewart money kicks in.

The 8-year-old daughter of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, who was killed last month by a stingray, plans to follow in her father's footsteps by starring in a new TV series, sparking a debate about whether the youngster is being exploited. Early next year Bindi Irwin will star in a 26-part series on Discovery Kids network, with the working title "Bindi, the Jungle Girl." A spokeswoman for Discovery, Annie Howell, said the wildlife documentary started several months ago as a show with Irwin and his daughter.
FROM WIRE REPORTS

Dream on

'I want to get married before I'm 30. And have my house. And make the kind of record I want. And I'd like to win an Oscar before then.' Lindsay Lohan, talking to In Style magazine.