Jan. 10 (UPI) — Allen Weisselberg, the former Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, will be sentenced Tuesday after he pleaded guilty last year for his role in a tax fraud scheme.
Weisselberg, 75, is expected to be sentenced to five months behind bars. When taking into account time off for good behavior, he will likely serve 100 days. He also has to pay close to $2 million in taxes and penalties and will receive five years of probation.
Had he been convicted at trial, he could have faced up to 15 years in prison.
In August, he plead guilty to charges stemming from a 15-year scheme to evade city, state and federal taxes on $1.76 million in unreported income. The charges against Weisselberg included grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, conspiracy, falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing.
As part of his plea agreement, Weisselberg testified against the Trump Organization in November.
Weisselberg said in court that he and other Trump executives knew the tax practices were illegal. They included paying lavish perks for executives in such a way that they avoided paying taxes while also saving the Trump organization money.
He testified that the illegal tax practices were cleaned up when Donald Trump became president.
“Mr. Trump became president, and everybody was looking at our company from every different angle you could think of,” Weisselberg testified, adding that the company wanted to “make sure that we correct everything that we have to correct.”
