November 1, 2010.

A private jet crashed into a field in western Warren County, Virginia. It apparently hit some small peaks of the early stages of the Blue Ridge Mountains and crashed into a ravine of a very fast river. The plane was shredded and no survivors were found aboard, there were fragments of a dead body, presumably the remains of the pilot or a passenger. A few days later, the NTSB got a look at the black box. The check of its flight data recorder showed that the pilot had blacked out apparently. He was talking and then he wasn’t. There were cries from the passenger section which would have been understandable under the circumstances. There was some strange whooshing noise. Perhaps someone had tried to jump out before impact. The manifest showed one pilot and one passenger, a rich guy named Sheldon Jones. The Sheriff had cordoned off the area, the NTSB came to reconstruct the accident.

October 30, 2010.

Jones sat in Sam McGonagle=s dentist chair. “So, doc, how do you keep your records?” McGonagle smiled, “Well after I see you, we enter all of the data into a mainframe computer back up which is then stored at 10 p.m. tonight into an off-site mainframe in New Jersey, and of course we keep a paper file here as well.”

October 1, 2010.

The Bank manager looked at the computer screen with amazement. The portly man who had been here the day before and opened a checking account had just received a wire for $1 Million. The notation on it was, “Gift from S. Jones.” When the portly man returned to the bank a few days later, the Bank manager asked him, where he knew Mr. Jones from and the portly man smiled. “His father fuck my mother while on vacation. He’s my half-brother. Lucky for me, eh?”. Lucky is right thought the clerk. Shortly thereafter the money was wired to several different banks and brokerage houses and invested to yield income.

October 29, 2010.

Bill Brubaker had a tough life in Chicago. He was what you might call down and out, or homeless, or less charitably a bum. He was 5’9” and was heavy set. He had gray and brown hair and brown eyes. He was apparently killed by some other person probably for a bottle of booze and suffered a blunt force trauma to the head. The ME truck arrived at the scene and two technicians proceeded to bag the body. After he was put in the bag the truck left. A few miles down the road it turned into an abandoned warehouse where a man with $10,000 was waiting. Thanks guys, don’t spend it all in one place. The detective working the case never figured out what happened to the body, the ME couldn’t find it and assumed it had been misplaced. There had been a mysterious power outage at the morgue that week causing bodies to be moved to other refrigerated places. His paperwork must have been lost. But who cared, he was just a homeless bum anyway. No one would really care.

October 30, 2010.

The somehow a spark ignited an open ether bottle. Sam McGonagle’s dental office went up in flames. It didn’t take long before the nitrous oxide tanks blew and the office building as in flames. The Fire Marshall ruled out arson since there had been a thunderstorm in the area and even static electricity can set off ether. Luckily no one was killed. Sam McGonagle luckily had plenty of insurance and his lease was about up anyway, so he was in the process of setting up a new office uptown. He got a low interest loan from his local bank and now had some insurance cash to boot. His only regret was that all his patient records were destroyed. Thank goodness for that computer back-up. Otherwise the fire really would have been a disaster.

Sheldon Jones was worth $500 Million. He invested heavily in real estate and worked hard making sure he got rent from every property sufficient to cover his debt loan and other expenses. It was hard work, but it paid off. He was sixty-five years old and in great shape. His blood pressure was low, his heart and lungs were clear. His doctor told him that he could live to be 100. He still had rugged good looks that came from living in the climate of Washington State. Seattle was his home. He was about 5’10” tall with gray and brown hair, brown eyes and a pale complexion.

Now it was the year 2010 and the Tax laws did not permit him to give that wealth to his kids without a huge tax. But if he died, well that would be another story. He had to come up with a plan. His kids were everything to him. His son, Phillipe and his daughter Christine were his pride and joy. He tried to make all of their events as they were growing up, and now that they were grown and had families of their own, he was despondent.

August 15, 2010.

“Dad, you seem down”, Christine asked at a family picnic. “Well, you know I’m not getting any younger. I could die any day. Will you miss me?” She smiled, “You know I will, Daddy.” He started to tear and choke up and looked away, then hugged her.

Christine was 30 years old and was the spitting image of her mother. Lean shapely and not looking any worse from having several kids. She was very attractive. She was happily married with four children. Phillipe was 27 years old, and a bit of a hippy. Long hair, a beard, handsome good looks, and a happy bachelor who seemed to have a new buxom babe every time Jones saw him. He told his dad, “I’m just spreading the love! And with big chicks there’s more to love.” The kid had a charm about him. No doubt about that.

September 30, 2010.

A portly man with a bad Spanish accent and looking like a derelict appeared at the Panamanian National Bank in Panama City. He wanted to open a savings account for $1,000. The bank clerk asked for identification and he handed over a paper drivers license showing his name of Lupe Cordero with a Panama City address. He was about 5’10” with brown hair and brown eyes. He was dirty as though he had waded through mud.

The Tax Court ruled in favor of the Frome family and to add insult to injury found the Government had not even a justiciable claim and levied a sanction of $100,000 upon the Government.

January 15, 2012.
Laura Holden and Brian had been dating for several months now. As they walked hand in hand out of the local Outback restaurant, Laura smiled a wan smile, “Brian, I hope that the Frome case won’t hurt your career. I’m sorry that forensics just haven’t quite caught up yet.” Brian smiled and bright smile, “No you didn’t hurt my career. We pursued the truth and it didn’t turn out. It was either a brilliant plan, perfectly executed, by ruthless people, or he really died on January 1, 2010, either way I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

January 15, 2012
Marilyn looked out at the Carribean. It was blue/green shimmering in the sunlight. Miquel, her latest boy toy, brought her a cold rum drink. She raised her glass to the sky and said, “thanks Dad”.

May 15, 2012
Daniel Frome was yelling into the telephone at some poor underling when he died of an instant heart attack at his desk. Due to the fact that the Frome Family Business had been put into a Dynasty Trust, Marilyn got the income from the other half of the estate as well for the rest of her life and the family business was soon merged with a large multinational company to provide her with the liquidity that she desired for her life.

This ends the first tale, we welcome your comments and suggestions. The next Tale starts tomorrow about a person who needed to die in 2010, but was too healthy to expect such a thing to natuarally occur.

January 21, 2012

The case went to the United State Tax Court. Brooks Jones, the Assistant to the District Counsel, was assigned to represent the IRS. Jones was a 20 year veteran and had tried nearly a hundred Tax Court cases. His aggressive demeanor and Bronx accent was well known in the Halls of the Court. Roger Jamison represented the family. Jamison was known as brilliant and ruthless. He had was probably the best Tax litigator in the Country and needless to say, the Family could afford the best. Each of the witnesses was paraded in front of the Court. On each one, Brooks Jones, asked them if they saw his entire face. The problem was the witnesses described long relationships with the decedent, and testified as to their knowledge of his gait and his normal appearance. In each case Brooks could not shake their stories. The children testified their story about how their father trekked out on New Year’s Day. Brooks tried tricking them by asking them about December 23 hoping to mess them up, but their stories held. He asked them why they let the old man go out unaccompanied. Marilyn sobbed uncontrollably as if on cue. Daniel choked up when asked the question. Esmerelda testified about the Christmas Day telephone conversation. Brooks asked if it could have been a recording. Esmerelda said, she was no expert, but it was his voice and his words and then she cried about what a nice man he was. Laura testified as the medical examiner that she could not affix a date of death with absolute certainty, but put August 9 on the death certificate as that was the date the body was found and is required by Virginia law, and was the official date of death. She further testified that DNA results confirmed that it was Sidney Frome’s body. Jones cross-examination went into details of the frostbite. But Laura couldn’t lie and told him that there was no way to determine if the frostbite was December frostbite, freezer frostbite, or dead in the snow frostbite. No matter how you slice it, it was not inconsistent with his dying during the snow storm and having his body encased in snow for a couple of weeks. Jamison did not delve into her personal relationship with the Auditor -saving that for another case, another day. The Service called no witnesses.

Six weeks after trial the Service filed its brief with hundreds of citations to cases in which the opinion of the Service was deemed correct because of the presumption of correctness. The law generally gives the IRS a presumption of correctness in its legal findings. The brief further stated that the Court was not bound by Virginia law as to the date of death. That again was merely a presumption and the Court could find differently if the facts supported it. The taxpayer responded that the presumption only applied to legal analysis and not factual findings and that the fact findings rested with the Court and the Service produced nothing that was inconsistent with the date of death believed by the family and the presumptive legal date of death in Virginia. They further argued that the fact that the Service did not put on any witnesses showed this case was brought in bad faith without any scintilla of evidence, merely somebody’s greed.