Fraud verdict, and house arrest, for business owner who avoided $605,355 in federal income tax
An advisor has received a conditional sentence after being found guilty of not reporting more than $2 million of commission fees.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) said that Joern Scholz was found guilty of one count of fraud over $5,000 by an Ontario court in April, and will serve a conditional sentence of two years less a day.
Scholz, of Springwater, Ontario, ran an investment counselling business and did not report any of the commission fees he earned from his clients for the 2011–2013 tax years in his individual tax returns.
According to the CRA, those fees totalled $2,149,730 and, by failing to report that income, meant he avoided $605,355 in federal income tax.
The CRA said Scholz also did not file GST/HST returns for the 2011–2015 tax years, which allowed him to avoid remitting $445,789 in GST/HST.
Scholz’s sentence includes 12 months of house arrest and a curfew for the remainder of his sentence. He has also been ordered to pay a fine of $445,789 for the GST/HST he failed to remit.
Meanwhile, an advisor has been fined $14,500 by the MFDA for multiple form violations that stretched over an eight-year period.
Since 1990, Walter Guiseppe Montina has been registered in Alberta as a mutual fund salesperson with Sun Life Financial Investment Services. At all times during the violations, he conducted business in the Lethbridge, Alberta.
He admitted three separate violations. Firstly, that in or around January 2013, he, or his assistant for whom he was responsible, altered information on an account form that had been previously signed by a client and used in a previous transaction in order to process a new transaction in the client’s account.
Secondly, that between March 2010 and January 2018, Montina, or assistants, altered and used to process transactions, 14 account forms in respect of nine clients by altering information on the account forms without having the clients initial the alterations.
Finally, between March 2010 and January 2018, he obtained, possessed, and used to process transactions, 29 pre-signed account forms in respect of 19 clients.
Montina must also pay costs of $2,500.
