Court of Appeals Reverses on Statute of Limitations Grounds for Failure Foreign Evidence Tolling Under 18 USC § 3292(a)(1) and For Resentencing (8/13/25)

In United States v. Gyetvay, 149 F.4th 1213 (11th Cir. 2025), 11th Cir. here amd GS here. the Court

• reversed Gyetvay’s convictions in Counts 11 and 12 for Willfully Failing to File Tax Returns for the years 2013 and 2014;
• otherwise sustained on the counts of conviction; and
• remanded for re-sentencing without the reversed Counts and for restitution.

I provide the following chart to show what the Court of Appeals did and the possibility of retrial on the Counts for which the jury hung. I then provide some commentary below the chart.

Counts	Charge	Sentence Max	Jury Verdict	Court of Appeals	Retrial
1-3	Aiding or Assisting § 7206(2) years 2006, 2007, 2008	9 years (3 years on each count)	Hung		Yes
4-6	Tax Evasion § 7201  Years 2007, 2008, 2009	15 years (5 years each count)	Hung		Yes
7-9	Willfully Failing to File § 7203 Years 2010, 2011, 2012,	3 years (1 year each count)	Hung		No - Foreclosed by reversal of convictions on Counts 10 & 11.
10 & 11	Willfully Failing to File § 7203 Years 2013, 2014	2 years (1 year each count)	Guilty	Reversed – Statute of Limitations was not tolled under 18 USC § 3292(a)(1)	No
12	Willfully Making False Statements on Streamlined Procedures Certification 18 USC § 1001 & 2	5 years	Guilty	Did Not Appeal, but vacates restitution order based on this Count	Re-sentencing
13	Willfully Failing to File FBAR - 31 USC. §§ 5314 & 5322(a); 31 C.F.R. §§ 1010.350, 1010.306(c)-(d) and 1010.840(b) Year 2014	5 years	Guilty	Affirmed	No
14	Wire Fraud Year 2014	20 years	Acquitted	Govt did not appeal	No
15	Wire Fraud No year	20 years	Hung		Yes

JAT Comments:

Daugerdas Conviction and Sentencing Affirmed by Second Circuit Court of Appeals (9/21/16)

The Second Circuit affirmed today the conviction and sentencing of Paul M. Daugerdas, promoter en mass of bullshit tax shelters.  United States v. Daugerdas, ___ F.3d ___, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17219 (2d Cir. 2016). The opinion is here.

The opinion, by Judge John M. Walker, starts with a summary of the convictions:

(1) one count of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; see 26 U.S.C. § 7201 and 18 U.S.C. § 1343; (2) four counts of client tax evasion in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7201 and 18 U.S.C. § 2; (3) one count of IRS obstruction in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7212(a); and (4) one count of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1342.  

He was then "sentenced principally to 180 months’ imprisonment, three years’ supervised release, $164,737,500 in forfeiture, and $371,006,397 in restitution."

Then, he argued on appeal that

(I) the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions; (II) the indictment was constructively amended; (III) the indictment was duplicitous; (IV) the accumulation of errors at trial violated his due process right to a fair trial; (V) the district court’s supplemental instruction on the Annual Accounting Rule misled the jury; (VI) his sentence was procedurally and substantively unreasonable; and (VII) the government failed to establish the requisite nexus between his crimes and the property sought in forfeiture. 

The Court of Appeals rejects all arguments and affirms.

The opinion is 37 pages long and is fairly straight-forward.

Basically, Daugerdas designed and participated, directly and through others, in the implementation some variation of the bullshit shelters based on an aggressive, too aggressive, interpretation of various strategies promoted by prominent law and accounting firms in the late 1990s and early 2000s.   He did this for his or his firm's clients and also did some of them for himself to shelter the large amount of income that he earned.  As the Court notes,

As an essential part of the marketing of all the tax shelters, Daugerdas and his colleagues issued “more‐likely‐than‐not” opinion letters to clients who purchased the shelters.  Such letters state that “under current U.S. federal income tax law it is more likely than not that” the transactions comprising the shelters are legal and will have the effect sought by the clients.  They protect clients from the IRS’s imposition of a financial penalty in the event that the IRS does not permit the losses generated by the shelter to reduce the client’s tax liability.    Paralegals or attorneys who worked for Daugerdas generated these letters and Daugerdas often reviewed and signed them himself.  The letters stated that the clients had knowledge of the particular transactions underlying the shelter and that the clients were entering into the shelter for non‐tax business reasons.  Multiple clients testified that they never made representations of knowledge to Daugerdas or his associates and that, in any event, these representations were false because the clients knew little or nothing about the underlying transactions and entered into the shelters only to reduce their tax liability.   

Because Daugerdas and his colleagues designed the transactions with a focus on their tax consequences rather than their profitability, they generally did not generate meaningful returns.  [Examples omitted]  Nevertheless, Daugerdas chose to proceed and even issued “more‐likely‐than‐not” opinion letters falsely stating that some of the transactions had a 15 reasonable possibility of producing a profit.  Moreover, the already‐ 16 low profit potential of all the shelters disappeared entirely when the 17 fees charged by J&G, BDO, and DB for the shelters were taken into account.  

Then, there was some backdating of transactions and documents to correct errors in the implementation.