Draft Hypothetical Indictment Based on Frank Lyon Facts

Abstract

This is a draft hypothetical indictment based on Frank Lyon Co. v. United States, 435 U.S. 561 (1978). I agree with a scholar's comment that "Tax shelters have been blamed on shoddy promoters, but few shelters are shoddier than those approved by the Court in [Frank] Lyon and [Clay] Brown." Charles I. Kingson, How Tax Thinks, 37 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 1031, 1035 (2004). Based on my involvement in the KPMG criminal tax shelter case, I have fashioned a criminal indictment using the claims in the KPMG criminal indictment and applying them to some extrapolated facts in Frank Lyon. I have done this solely for teaching purposes to show how easy it would be to use the KPMG indictment as a template to indict transactions that were blessed by the Supreme Court by using broad Klein/defraud conspiracy allegations.

Keywords: Conspiracy, Klein Conspiracy, Defraud Conspiracy, Tax Shelters

JEL Classification: K14, H26