Crime and Courts Roundup: Milwaukee neurosurgeon to be sentenced for filing false income tax returns

• Legal scales

Legal scales

Talk about it

A Milwaukee area neuro-surgeon is scheduled to be sentenced in January, after he failed to disclose multi-million-dollar offshore bank accounts to the I-R-S. A federal court jury convicted 50-year-old Arvind Ahuja on charges of filing a false income tax return, and not filing a report of foreign financial accounts. The jury found Ahuja innocent of five other charges. And his lawyers asked Federal Judge Charles Clevert to nullify the jury’s guilty verdicts. The judge said he would take it under advisement. Prosecutors said Ahuta moved millions-of-dollars from U-S banks to India – and he failed to report two-point-seven-million in interest income to the I-R-S. The interest was given from 2005-through-’09. U-S Attorney James Santelle said the government is committed to enforcing its tax laws fairly, and the jury’s verdict showed that failing to report foreign bank accounts would not be tolerated. But defense lawyer Dan Webb said the I-R-S should have handled the case as a civil matter instead of a criminal one. Attorney Thomas Kirsch said the issue involved a failure to file one tax form. Webb said Ahuja filed amended returns before he was indicted – and paid all taxes, interest, and penalties that were due.

__________________________________________________________________________

Wausau Police say they’ve identified a person-of-interest in the disappearance of a 22-year-old woman almost two years ago. Stephanie Low has been missing since October of 2010. Police said they interviewed a 32-year-old man soon after Low vanished. Since then, officers say they’ve gathered information to justify another conversation. The man is currently in the Marathon County Jail for violating a previous probation, as the result of a meth-amphetamine possession charge filed just over two weeks ago. Low’s mother praises police for refusing to give up in finding her daughter.

__________________________________________________________________________

A drunk driver from Port Washington was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison for hitting an elderly pedestrian and driving away. 54-year-old Kevin Brown must also spend six years under extended supervision when he leaves prison – and he has to maintain absolute sobriety the entire time. Brown pleaded no contest in June to hit-and-run and causing injury by drunk driving. His vehicle struck 82-year-old Dolores Kopacz last December while she was walking on a rural road in Ozaukee County. He never stopped to help, and was arrested seven hours later at his job in Sheboygan. By that time, Brown’s blood alcohol level was still more than twice the legal limit of point-zero-eight. Kopacz died from cancer last weekend. But Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Malloy said she would have died from the crash had another motorist not stopped to help. As it was, she had fractures to a leg, shoulder, and hip – plus numerous other injuries.

Tags: crime and courts, news, wisconsin, crime