So far we’ve seen a body hidden to avoid taxes, a body switched to fake a death. These fall into the fraud category of things. Now, we move into the capital crime category, that of murder. Now anytime that you have a murder, you have another problem, that being that the murderer cannot inherit. Thus murder brings with it other problems outside of the tax realm. Also, murders tend to bring out the better detectives, lab techs pay closer attention and its a whole different game.

IT COULD BE A MURDER

Jack Jenkins was a celebrity in the finest sense of the word. He was an All-American quarterback at Alabama. He had his car horn fixed to play the Alabama fight song and wore red where ever he went. After his career at Alabama ended he played pro football with Jacksonville, Tennessee and Philadelphia. He got paid well to be a back-up quarterback and used that money to invest in car dealerships in Alabama. His name was well known enough to bring lots of paying customers with the hope of seeing the Big Bomber as he was called by Montgomery sports writers.

Jack had one son, Jack Jenkins, Jr.. Junior ran the Jack Jenkins Springfield Ford. He had a gritty slick look that you would expect of a car dealer. Polyester suits, bright ties, cigarette stains on his hands, and binaca on his desk. Jack, Jr. started out as a mechanic at the Springfield dealership. He built the sales on making sure he knew his customers and their desires. He didn’t have to have many discount days because he kept his inventories stocked with the cars people wanted. As a result of his work, his dad became less and less involved with the business.

April, 2008,

Jack, Sr., looked like he had been hit by a runaway freight train. His wife of 30 years had died of brain cancer. Jack, Jr. as always, kept a level headed demeanor and showed no outward signs of grief. Jack, Sr. took it hard.

August 1, 2008.

“Son, I’ve gotta take a leave of absence, I just can’t focus. You’ve been running our Springfield store for quite awhile, I want you to manage all the stores.” Junior was thrilled. “Dad what kind of pay increase will I get?” His Dad answered, “Junior, you’re my son, and all of this will be yours some day, your salary is enough for you to have a very comfortable and very prosperous life. Let’s review this issue next spring and see where we are. I see dark days ahead for the auto industry.”

With that, Senior headed down to Mexico for a month at some villa he rented.

January 17, 2012.

“Hello, Mr. Cince”, this is Brian Peterson. “ I have looked at every angle on this Sheldon Jones case and it appears that there is no doubt that he died in 2010. I don’t think its worth the effort to check on the value of the REIT stock do you? Except maybe to justify the charitable deduction, but its pecuniary anyway and if the value is short, more stock would go to the charity.”

“Nah, Brian, don’t hassle with it, its probably in the ballpark and maybe even overvalued slightly if my bet is correct. Since there is no step-up in basis for income tax purposes for folks dying in 2010, these folks will have their father’s basis, so we’ll get something if the REIT is ever sold. Just close the file and send them a closing letter, the long form.”

February 15, 2012

Roger Johnson opened up the thin letter from the IRS. He knew what it was before opening it. It was a closing letter for the Estate of Sheldon Jones. He picked up the telephone.

“Hello, Christine, the IRS has signed off on the Estate tax return, you can distribute the assets of the estate into the Trust and to the Foundation and close the estate.”

She called Lupe, “Hello Lupe, the Service agreed that no tax is due.”

Lupe smiles on beach in Panama drinking a pina’ colada served by a scantily clad young woman, and says, “You know I could get used to this.”

February 15, 2015.

Christine picked up the newspaper and her blood goes cold. Her husband picks up the paper and reads the headline out loud. “Communist Junta in Panama”. “I wonder if your Uncle Lupe is going to seek asylum in the USA? And I guess he has no money anymore.”

After procuring the telephone number of the backup facility from Dr. McGonagle’s secretary Peterson called the company and once he got to the office of the head of security Buck Banjo, he asked, “Hi, this is Brian Peterson from the IRS, and no we’re not auditing you, we’re reviewing an estate tax return for someone and wanted to know if you have had any security breaches in the last two years where someone’s dental records might have been swapped?”

“None that I recall. We’ve of course had lots of people try to hack in do damage to our system, but no records have been altered from hacking that I know of? We run a fairly sophisticated program here every day that compares files at the end of the day with files from the previous day and where they differ they are flagged with when the file was altered, and then we check the times with the origins of incoming data streams from our customers. If there was a data change, it would have to have originated from the customer or we would have investigated it. What dentist is this?”, said Buck. “Dr. McGonagle,” replied Brian. “Let me check my sheets, nope, no problems with McGonagle, ever” Buck responded. “Sorry”.

Brian called Laura, “Laura, I hate to impose, but could you call Mr. Jones physician to see where he kept his records and whether they were secure.” “Sure, Brian, but you’ll owe me a home cooked Irish meal” teased Laura.

“Hello, Dr. Stephens, this is Laura Holden, the Medical Examiner in Virginia, how are you today. I’m following up on the Sheldon Jones case. I have been asked by the IRS to check and make sure that the body I checked was really Sheldon Jones, I don’t know why. How did you keep your records”. “In my office here and electronically backed up offsite. Before I sent them to you, I doubled checked the hard copy with the electronic copy to ensure that they were identical and they were”, replied Dr. Stephens. “Okay, that’s good enough for me”, said Laura, “sorry to bother you”.

Laura then dialed the number for Brian Peterson, “Hi, Bri, this is Laura, I just got off the phone with Dr. Stephens, it was Jones”. “He would have to have been some sort of chameleon to change his DNA, his dental records, and his height in hard copy and computer”, added Laura.

“Thanks Laura, I just wanted to be sure I was thorough here”, Brian responded. “I guess I need to buy some corned beef and cabbage”.

January 15, 2012.

“Hello, Barry, this is Brian Peterson with the IRS. Thanks for sending over the file.” “You’re welcome”, responded the NTSB agent. “Did you ever determine the cause of the crash?”asked Peterson. Barry smiled, because there was no official determination of the crash.

“No, we made no final findings. You see this plane is very air-worthy, one of the safest in the air and they rarely go down. It might have been pilot error or hypoxia due to depressurization of the cabin. Lots of theories in our shop, but nothing definitive.”

“Barry, could Mr. Jones have faked his own death”, Brian asked hopefully. “How do you explain the dead body in the plane which matches the decedent’s description, dental records, and DNA, if it was a fake. And that was a very real plane crash. Now if you were to ask me if he crashed the plane on purpose to kill himself…” Barry’s voice faded off. “Nah, I’m sorry, that’s a real stretch, since the pilot parachuted out. Of course the Pilot might have wanted him dead or killed him, but that’s a stretch, too since he and the Pilot were close according to all witnesses.”

Even if it was murder, Brian thought, that doesn’t get us around the Estate tax since a murderer is not entitled to inherit from the estate, therefore, you can’t even make out a tax fraud case. Better to leave it up to the forensic experts like hot Laura, he thought.

Brian called the dentist, Sam McGonagle. “I understand that you faxed over the dental records for the late Sheldon Jones, is that correct?” asked Brian. “Absolutely, I have a digital image which I got from my offsite digital storage facility, since my hard files were burned in a fire”. “How are you certain that someone didn’t tamper with the records?” queried Brian hopefully. “As far as I know these folks have the state of the art security on their records. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but they didn’t report anything out of the ordinary to me,” responded McGonagle somewhat perturbed by the insinuation of some IRS sort. “Thanks for your help, who is your offsite storage company?”, responded Brian. “You’ll have to ask my secretary, I don’t know off the top of my head, they’re in New Jersey somewhere”.