Wonderful news/Collection figures goes to prison
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Posted by Bob3
(68.95.132.199) on February 23, 2004 at 14:38:40:
Former CFS Shell Company Head Reports for Prison Sentence. Shawnee attorney serving time in federal prison
From staff and AP wire reports Shawnee Attorney James D. Sill Jr., 59, has reported to the U.S Bureau of Prisons to serve a six-month sentence for tax evasion. Kathryn Tracy, public information officer for the south central region of U.S. Bureau of Prisons, said Sill is jailed at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution. His projected release date is Aug. 8. Now that Sill has a conviction, it is unknown how it will effect his license to practice law. Dan Murdock, general counsel with the Oklahoma Bar Association, said he can't comment on specific cases because of confidentiality. However, he said it is normally up to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to decide whether a lawyer is disciplined for any type of criminal conviction. In general, a complaint is filed with the Oklahoma Supreme Court and an interim suspension may be granted. The lawyer can file papers showing why he shouldn't be disciplined, but ultimately the decision is up the state's high court. Sill was sentenced in January and ordered to report to a federal jail facility no later than Feb. 10. Sill, the former president of the Shell Corp. linked to the demise of Commercial Financial Services, also will pay fines of more than $11,000. U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton turned down a request by the prosecution and defense that Sill be placed on probation after entering his guilty plea last March. The judge said he would consider Sill's cooperation with authorities, which included testifying against former CFS President Bill Bartmann during a fraud trial last fall. A jury acquitted Bartmann in December on charges that accused him and others of fraudulent actions that led to the downfall of CFS, putting nearly 4,000 people out of work and costing investors more than $1 billion. Heaton said it was clear that Sill's case was "not an isolated incident of someone cheating on his taxes." Instead, Sill's actions occurred against a larger backdrop involving CFS and the sham corporation known as Dimat Inc. According to a court document, then-CFS Executive Vice President Jay Lowell Jones asked Sill to be "the owner of record" for a business that would purchase credit card accounts from CFS. Sill incorporated Dimat and established himself as its president on Sept. 18, 1997. Evidence introduced during Bartmann's trial showed that credit card accounts worth some $63 million were shifted from CFS to Dimat from September 1997 through September 1998. The government alleged that Bartmann and Jones conspired to funnel funds to Dimat to make it appear that CFS was meeting its monthly collection goals. Jones pleaded guilty to participating in a criminal conspiracy related to the CFS 1998 collapse and is now serving a five-year prison term. Heaton said his review of the Bartmann trial transcript showed him that Sill engaged in a "continuing effort to downplay his own knowledge or role in ways that were not always plausible." In Sill's plea agreement, he admitted that he willingly omitted $100,000 of income "earned as professional compensation" for his operation of Dimat on his 1997 tax return. During the hearing, Sill said he had the highest respect for the legal profession and said he feels bad if his actions have cast any shadow on it. He said he would do anything to take back his actions and "would give an arm or a leg to turn the clock back."
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