...

Former Soccer Star Admits to Massive Fraud

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A former Seattle college soccer star, currently serving time for sexual assault in Arizona and on a second sexual assault case in Washington state, pleaded guilty to his role in a massive tax fraud.

During his tax fraud scheme, Dion L. Earl, 48, purchased the Seattle Impact FC, a professional indoor soccer club. According to court records, Earl used false documents to lie about his income, the amount of tax dollars withheld by employers, and his mortgage deductions so that he could attempt to claim more than $1.6 million in fraudulent tax refunds. The IRS paid him more than $1 million based on those claims.

In the 1990s, Earl was a soccer star at Seattle Pacific University. Between 2008 and 2014, Earl also worked in car sales in Washington state and Arizona and owned Dion Earl’s Total Soccer & Tennis Camps and the Seattle Impact FC. In pleading guilty, Earl admitted that he used his association with car dealers, his soccer camp and his soccer team to commit tax fraud.

Earl specifically acknowledged that on his 2012 tax return, he claimed that he made $1.6 million working for eight different car dealers, which withheld more than $660,000 of his wages for taxes and that his wife was employed by Dion Earl’s Total Soccer & Tennis Camps, which paid her $240,000 and withheld $51,000 in taxes.

He also claimed that he made $520,000 in mortgage interest payments on four different properties.

Earl admitted that, in fact, all these claims were false.[/vc_column_text][us_image image=”2512″][/vc_column][/vc_row]