NEW YORK (AP) -- A New York City podiatrist has pleaded guilty to charges of using Caribbean bank and credit card accounts to launder money and evade city, state and federal taxes on more than $300,000 in income.
Gordon John, 45, pleaded guilty Monday to third-degree money laundering. He has been promised a sentence of five years probation and a fine when he is sentenced September 13 in Manhattan's state Supreme Court.District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said John's was one of about 40 cases his office investigated after it subpoenaed MasterCard's records of offshore accounts about two years ago.
Morgenthau said MasterCard in 2001 issued some 115,000 bank cards in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas around New York City, giving access to more than $100 million in offshore banks. He said 20 percent of those cards were issued by Leadenhall Bank & Trust Co., in Nassau, the Bahamas.
Morgenthau said John earned $250,000 to $300,000 a year. He said John laundered more than $200,000 in taxable income through offshore accounts, including one at Leadenhall, between September 2000 and the first half of this year.
John did this mainly by billing his medical practice for fake expenses, then sending money into offshore accounts he controlled to pay the fake bills, Morgenthau said. Once the money was in the accounts, he would use it to pay personal expenses.
Of the total that John laundered through offshore accounts, he sent about $126,000 to an account at Leadenhall. John said that money was deposited to pay office rent, but he owned the building where he practiced.
John used a MasterCard credit card issued by Leadenhall Bank to access the money in his accounts, Morgenthau said. He said that in a two-week period in 2003, John used the credit card to access more than $20,000 from his Leadenhall account.
Besides the laundered $200,000, Morgenthau said, John failed to report another $100,000 in income. He said audits from the state Department of Taxation and Finance found that the podiatrist had under-reported his earnings by at least $300,000.
