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NY Lawyer Pleads Guilty for Helping 'Taxi King' With Tax Fraud

By George Khoury, Esq. on June 04, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Recently, a New York lawyer pleaded guilty for her involvement in the "Taxi King's" $5 million tax fraud, which happened after the king himself pleaded guilty in a no-jail deal.

There are quite a few curious facts in this case, and one of the more curious ones (apart from the whole taxi-royalty being a thing) involves the fact that the no-jail deal for the Taxi King (a.k.a. Evgeny Freidman, a disbarred attorney), seemed to materialize conveniently after the recent raid on Michael Cohen's office. Apparently, the U.S. royal taxi court had ties to the current president's personal attorney. It seems nether the Taxi King, nor his attorney, will actually face any time behind bars.

Cooperating Attorneys

As reported by the ABA, attorney Andrea Dumitru's plea to a felony tax fraud charge will be allowed to be withdrawn and replaced with a misdemeanor charge, after she fulfills her promises of cooperation. She'll also have to shovel out quite a bit of money and serve three years of probation.

In the tax fraud case, it was alleged that she and Evgeny Freidman withheld $5 million in MTA taxes by exploiting the $0.50 tax charged to all taxi riders. As the AG's office explained, the scheme was rather elaborate:

Freidman and Dumitru orchestrated a scheme to withhold that money by improperly filing returns, failing to file returns, failing to remit the tax on filed returns, and by filing falsified returns, which underreported the true number of taxable rides.

Foul Asylum

In addition to the royal tax problems of Dumitru, she is also facing charges in the Southern District of New York related to alleged filings of fraudulent asylum applications. Though there are only two counts charged, it's alleged that she submitted nearly 200 fraudulent asylum applications in a five year period.

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