CALIFORNIA – A medical device inventor was sentenced on Monday to six months in prison for hiding more than $8 million in foreign bank accounts, federal officials announced.
Ashvin Desai, of San Jose, also filed a document in court that the Internal Revenue Service has assessed a penalty against him for $14.2 million, officials said.
In October, a jury convicted Desai, of failing to report his family’s foreign bank accounts on tax returns and federal reports. The jury also found that Desai failed to disclose more than $1.2 million in interest income generated by these accounts between 2007 and 2009.
According to the evidence presented in court, Desai controlled several foreign bank accounts at HSBC in India and Dubai, including accounts held in the name of his wife and adult children.
The evidence at trial mapped out the steps Desai took to conceal his family’s foreign accounts from the government.
In addition to failing to report his accounts on tax returns and federal reports, Desai also directed the bank not to mail bank statements to his house . On one occasion, Desai wrote an email in which he asked an HSBC banker: “Why are all the statements coming to Home address? I thought we had a different arrangement.”