BEVERLY HILLS—A businessman from Beverly Hills was sentenced to 21 months in prison after he pled guilty for filing false tax returns and failed to report an income that exceeded $1 million on Thursday, October 10.
Teymour Khoubian, 66, filed phony tax returns which failed to report foreign financial accounts he had in Germany and Israel between the years of 2009 and 2010. From 2005 through 2012, Khoubian shared multiple bank accounts with his mother at Bank Leumi in Israel. The bank accounts totaled between $15 million to $20 million. It is a legal requirement for anyone with a bank account containing more than $10,000 to declare the amount to the IRS. His account at Bank Leumi generated interest of $4 million between 2005 and 2010. Since 2005, Khoubian owned an account in Germany with Commerzbank AG.
According to officials, the estimated total tax loss associated with the Bank Leumi account is $1.2 million.
As of 2009, Khoubian was aware of the IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program. The program allowed U.S. taxpayers to voluntarily disclose unreported foreign accounts and pay a reduced penalty to resolve their civil liability for not declaring foreign accounts to American authorities. In 2011 and 2012, Khoubian’s Bank Leumi requested that he sign a W-9 form for tax purposes. In a recorded telephone conversation from 2012, Khoubian is heard telling the bank representative that the reason why he did not want to sign the W-9 was because “you have to pay half of it.”
In 2012 and 2014, he made multiple false statements to IRS special agents regarding his foreign accounts. He stated that the Bank Leumi accounts were not in his name and that he didn’t have bank accounts in Germany between the years of 2005 and 2010. He also told special agents that he closed his German account and transferred all the monies within the account to the U.S. Khoubian affirmed that none of the money in his German account was moved to Israel.
Teymour Khoubian’s sentence includes a payment of $612,310 in restitution to the IRS. Khoubian was also required to pay a Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts penalty of $7,686,004 plus interest. According to the United States Department of Justice, Khoubian already paid FBAR the amount owed.
“The Tax Division alongside its strong partners in U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the IRS is committed to prosecuting U.S. taxpayers, who willfully hide offshore accounts, and that the penalty for such criminal conduct is not just a financial penalty, but prison,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman in a press release.
