Lewisboro Town Justice Marc A. Seedorf has pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failure to pay $160,000.
Seedorf did not file tax returns for 11 years, from 2005 to 2015, according to the criminal information, concealed income from a lawsuit settlement and from a private law practice, and at one point had amassed $487,000 in tax liabilities.
Seedorf orchestrated a scheme from 2009 to 2019, the criminal information states, to evade paying taxes “largely by failing to file personal income tax returns, ignoring the IRS”™ repeated requests for documents and records, and taking steps to conceal the existence of ”¦ assets.”
Seedorf, of South Salem, has served as town justice since 1998. He worked as a prosecutor for the Bronx district attorney after graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1981, and has maintained a private law practice for 33 years.
He formed a solo practice in the Bronx in 2012. Then from 2013 through 2015 he did not report his income, according to the criminal information.
He also failed to report more than $1.5 million from a 2012 lawsuit settlement. The criminal information does not identify the case, but Westchester Supreme Court records show a $2.8 million award in a medical malpractice settlement that year, in the death of his wife, Donna. The award included legal fees and payments to his three children.
Seedorf asked the law firm that represented him to deposit his portion of the settlement in the firm”™s attorney trust account, according to the criminal information, “as part of his effort to conceal the funds from the IRS.”
Then he instructed the firm to transfer most of the funds to his own firm”™s accounts and to his brother-in-law, but not to his personal bank account.
He put some of the money in his investment account, made mortgage payments on a home that was facing foreclosure and paid down $357,100 of his federal tax liability.
He told an IRS revenue agent who had begun an audit in 2014 that he had borrowed money from his law firm”™s escrow account to pay the taxes. He did not disclose the lawsuit settlement.
He never provided records that the IRS demanded for an audit, the criminal information states, and he did not respond to mail, telephone and email messages from the agency.
In pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion, Seedorf faces up to five years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 24 by U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel in White Plains federal court.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Coffman is in charge of the prosecution.
