A 62-year-old Tacoma woman convicted of helping hundreds of people evade paying federal income taxes has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle on Wednesday imposed the sentence on Sharon D. Kukhahn.
A federal jury in May convicted Kukhahn of conspiracy, four counts of tax evasion and corrupt interference with internal revenue laws.
Prosecutors contended she advised clients they didn’t have to pay federal taxes and conspired with others to promote a trust scheme that sought to illegally hide clients’ assets from the IRS.
Kukhahn also provided a frivolous letter-writing service designed “to thwart IRS efforts to collect taxes owed,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle reported in a news release.
Prosecutors estimated Kukhahn helped her clients cheat the U.S. government out of $4 million in tax revenue. She also was convicted of evading taxes herself from 2003 to 2006.
Before imposing sentence, Settle called Kukhahn’s businesses “absurd” and said he’s rarely seen such “greed, obfuscation, delusion and treachery,” the news release states.
Kukhahn used proceeds from her businesses to buy a yacht, a Mercedes car, land in Panama and a waterfront home in Tacoma’s North End, federal prosecutors said.
“This defendant will have many months in prison to decide whether or not it was worth it,” said Marcus Williams, the IRS special agent in charge for the Pacific Northwest region.
Kukhahn’s defense attorney, Paula T. Olson, wrote in a sentencing memorandum that her client, a grandmother, never told people not to pay their taxes.
“She gave people a choice of how to deal with their taxes,” said Olson, who argued her client should receive only probation. “This is not a person with criminal intent and greed at the forefront of her thinking. She actually believed, and continues to believe, that she was helping people.”
In a letter to the judge, Kukhahn said she was sorry if “my actions have caused anyone harm.”
“It was and never has been my intent to harm this great country nor to harm any other countryman or countrywoman with any of my actions,” she wrote.
Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644 adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
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