Former UBS Client Enters Into Plea Agreement

The defendant in United States v. John McCarthy has pled guilty for willfully failing to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) for 2004. The defendant was a former client with UBS and held a foreign bank account in the Cayman Islands. In 2003, the defendant skimmed money from his domestic businesses into a separate bank account, after which the defendant wire transferred these funds to his UBS account in Switzerland. The defendant also engaged in a number of practices in an attempt to conceal his identity and was advised by UBS that "a lot of United States' clients don't report their income and just take it off the top." The maximum sentence that the defendant may face is five years imprisonment with a three year period of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of gross gain or loss resulting from the offense, whatever is greater.