In The Courts

In United States v. Boulware, 2004 WL 2035198 (9th Cir. Sept. 14, 2004), the defendant appealed his convictions for filing false tax returns, tax evasion, and conspiracy to make false statements to a federally-insured financial institution, in part on the ground that the district court abused its discretion by excluding evidence of a state-court judgment. The court of appeals found that portion of the appeal meritorious and reversed the conviction.

The federal charges against the defendant centered around allegations that he had supported by a lavish lifestyle by siphoning money from his company Hawaiian Island Enterprises (HIE) and failing to pay taxes on that money, some of which allegedly was laundered in Asian and Pacific banks. As the defendant moved toward a divorce from his wife, he had his girlfriend hold a large sum of HIE's cash for safekeeping so that he could afford to purchase his wife's one-half interest in HIE and prevent it from being liquidated. Ultimately, his girlfriend refused to return much of the money with which she had been entrusted, so the defendant sued her in state court. The jury in the state court case found that the money at issue belonged to HIE, not the girlfriend, and so had to be returned.