Tax Fraud Blotter: Keys to the kingdom
Check churning; a Maserati and a McLaren; private family foundation; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
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Jacksonville, Florida: Pastor and self-described prophet Brian Carn, 37, who was featured on Christian television networks like TBN, Daystar and The Word Network, pleaded guilty to tax evasion.
Carn co-founded Kingdom City Church in 2016. The Pentecostal congregation launched in Charlotte and has campuses in Jacksonville, Florida, and Houston. The Charlotte campus closed last month after the church was evicted for failing to pay roughly $76,000 in rent, according to The Christian Post.
The eviction came six months after Carn pleaded guilty to obstructing efforts by the IRS to collect tax debts. The Department of Justice stated Carn’s actions cost the government between $550,000 and $1.5 million.
The IRS began attempting to collect unpaid taxes from Carn in 2016. His 2015 tax return showed he earned more than $1.4 million and owed more than $600,000 in taxes, which he did not pay.
The IRS attempted to collect the debt by placing liens on his properties and seizing his bank accounts. Carn then hired a new accountant and provided a backdated employment agreement falsely stating he had only made $120,000 in 2015.
Carn continued to underreport his income for several years and stopped filing tax returns altogether in 2020. He made false representations and omissions to the IRS to conceal his assets and income.
Carn was sentenced to nine months in prison followed by a year of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $595,989 in restitution. Carn’s sentence was set to begin June 15, but he received a 60-day extension to care for his terminally ill father.
Dallas: Anderson Condoll Jr., 44, from The Colony, Texas, pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. Condoll was indicted in April 2026 on five counts of tax evasion for years 2019-2023. He entered into a plea agreement to one count of tax evasion.
Condoll owed $437,245 in federal income taxes spanning 2014-2025, and admitted that he would file Forms W-4 with his employers falsely claiming to be exempt from income taxes, causing his employers to not withhold income taxes from his wages.
He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted. His sentencing date has not been set.
Danbury, Connecticut: Francis J. O’Reilly, a former Carmel attorney who was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion, has been suspended from the practice of law for three years.
O’Reilly, 68, of Danbury, Connecticut, had used his experience as an accountant and tax professional to avoid his tax obligations for almost 20 years.
O’Reilly practiced law for 31 years in Carmel, Putnam County, and managed an accounting firm in Elmsford for several years.
From 1997 to 2018 he failed to pay $155,771 in employee federal payroll taxes, and he used $481,673 from his attorney trust account for personal expenses.
In 2016, when he owed more than $690,000 in taxes, interest and penalties he offered to settle his tax liability for $12,400. But he failed to disclose the money he took from the trust account, or that he was building a house in New Mexico.
In December 2019, he was charged with willful failure to collect and pay taxes and attempt to evade taxes. He pleaded guilty.
In September 2020, O’Reilly was sentenced to 18 months in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $801,969 in restitution to the IRS. He began serving his prison sentence in March 2021 and was released 10 months later in January 2022.
The appellate court had suspended O’Reilly from practicing law because of the conviction and postponed a final disciplinary order until after his release from prison.
Meanwhile, according to his LinkedIn profile, O’Reilly has been working as a controller and tax compliance officer with Daniel F. Kelleher Auctions in Danbury, Connecticut, since early 2023.
Frisco, Texas: A Texas man pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the IRS by promoting and selling a fraudulent tax shelter.
From at least February 2018 until September 2023, Larry C. Conner, 69, of Frisco, conspired with others to defraud the IRS by promoting to taxpayers nationwide an abusive trust tax shelter in which taxpayers diverted nearly all of their income through a series of three purported “non-grantor” trusts and a so-called “private family foundation” for purposes of evading the assessment of taxes owed on that income.
Conner promoted the abusive trust tax shelter at in-person seminars to clients in the name of The Business Solutions Group. Conner sold the trusts and foundations used in the abusive trust tax shelter for a fee typically ranging from $25,000 to $50,000. Conner admitted that he knew the tax shelters he promoted were fraudulent based on repeated warnings he received from attorneys and accountants that the tax shelter was illegal, as well as his knowledge and receipt of materials that the IRS publishes to educate the public about the illegal nature of abusive trust tax shelters.
Conner further admitted to personally using the abusive trust tax shelter from 2016 through 2021, to evade income taxes on about $5.2 million of his income.
Conner admitted to promoting the abusive trust tax shelter in concert with a number of individuals, including a CPA, a bookkeeper and a tax preparer.
Conner and his co-conspirators’ caused the filing of false tax returns fraudulently sheltering approximately $156 million in income, which resulted in an approximate tax loss to the IRS of $43 million.
Conner pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 26, 2027, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Inverness, Illinois: George Dilles, 55, of Inverness, Illinois, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Dilles had pleaded guilty to one count of failure to truthfully account for and pay employment taxes to the IRS.
Dilles was the president and part-owner of NG Enterprises Inc. (d.b.a. Visiting Angels), a company that provided elderly home personal care in the Milwaukee area and employed from 50 to 110 workers. Dilles was required to withhold federal income taxes, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes from his employees’ wages, hold those amounts in trust, and pay them over to the IRS. Additionally, he was responsible for filing quarterly tax returns reporting those amounts to the IRS, and for paying the employer’s matching portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes.
For 17 quarters from 2019 through 2023, Dilles willfully failed to file employment tax returns and pay over taxes to the IRS of more than $1.2 million. Dilles used some of the funds on personal expenses, including mortgage payments and purchases of a Maserati and a McLaren. He also used employment tax returns, which he had not filed with the IRS, to obtain a Paycheck Protection Program loan in the amount of $312,500.
Dilles was also ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution and to serve three years of supervised release.
Washington: A Mississippi man pleaded guilty to evading the payment of more than $2 million in federal income taxes.
Eric Brian Rosenberg tried to hide money from the government after he learned that an IRS revenue officer was trying to collect the income taxes that he owed.
Between 2016 and 2020, in a practice known as “check churning,” Rosenberg repeatedly removed most of the funds from his checking account by purchasing a cashier’s check, and holding that check until he wanted cash. When Rosenberg wanted money, he would deposit the cashier’s check into his bank account, withdraw the cash he wanted, and remove the unspent funds via another cashier’s check.
Later, Rosenberg took additional steps to avoid paying the taxes he owed by forming a company, opening a bank account in the company’s name, depositing money into that nominee bank account, and continuing to churn checks. At the same time, from 2016 through 2021, Rosenberg spent over $1 million gambling at casinos.
Rosenberg pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 16, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
