Retired FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion

LAS VEGAS—A retired FBI agent has pleaded guilty to evading approximately $109,000 in personal income taxes, announced Daniel G. Bogden, United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.

Jan Lindsey, 67, of Henderson, Nevada, pleaded guilty on Friday, March 5, 2010, before U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan to one count of felony tax evasion, and is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, July 9, 2010.

According to the plea agreement, Lindsey worked as an FBI agent for 26 years and retired from the FBI in 1995. For the next 10 years, Lindsey worked for the FBI as a contractor performing background investigations. Prior to 1999, Lindsey timely filed tax returns with the IRS. Beginning in 1999, Lindsey started using illegal tax avoidance methods to file his and his wife’s joint tax returns. Lindsey failed to timely file or pay federal income tax for the years 1999 through 2006, and committed various acts that were designed to hide his income and assets from the IRS, including placing assets in nominee names, presenting or recording fraudulent documents in an attempt to obtain lien and levy releases on his property, filing false returns after liabilities were assessed in an attempt to reduce or eliminate his unpaid liability, and presenting frivolous financial or negotiable instruments to the Department of the Treasury in claimed payment of his outstanding tax liability.

Lindsey was arrested last May with three others following a three-year investigation by the Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force into allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, and possession of unregistered machine guns. Co-defendants Samuel Davis, 54, of Council, Idaho, and Shawn Rice, 46, of Seligman, Arizona, are scheduled for trial beginning June 21, 2010. Co-defendant Harold Call, 67, of Las Vegas, Nevada, is currently scheduled for trial beginning March 22, 2010; however, a stipulation to continue the trial date is pending before the Court.

According to the court records, from March 2008 through the date of the Indictment, Davis and Rice allegedly laundered for undercover FBI agents approximately $1.3 million of monies, which they had been told were proceeds of a bank fraud scheme. The cases are being investigated by the FBI-led Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force, which also includes ATF, Henderson Police Department, IRS Criminal Investigation, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Nevada Department of Public Safety, North Las Vegas Police Department, and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in Nevada, Council, Idaho, and Flagstaff and Seligman, Arizona.