Fla. Yacht Broker Gets 2 Months Prison In UBS Case

CURT ANDERSON

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida yacht broker who admitted filing a false U.S. tax return and concealing millions of dollars in a secret account at Swiss bank UBS AG was sentenced Friday to two months in prison.

U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn gave 58-year-old Robert Moran credit for immediately confessing his crime and for assisting U.S. investigators in a broad probe into tax evasion at UBS and other offshore banks. Cohn also noted that Moran, a British-born U.S. citizen, had fully paid the $1.9 million in penalties and back taxes he owed.

But Cohn said "the public is weary" of people trying to hide wealth from the Internal Revenue Service and rejected Moran's request for a sentence of only probation.

"It's not necessarily the money involved, it's the deception," Cohn said.

Moran, who is scheduled to report to prison Jan. 4, in April became the first UBS client in the U.S. to plead guilty after the Swiss bank provided federal prosecutors with about 150 names of suspected American tax evaders. Since then, the bank reached a second agreement that calls for disclosure of 4,450 additional U.S. taxpayers to the IRS.