Haas receives 2-year term for defrauding IRS
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

Gene Haas, owner of Oxnard-based Haas Automation, was sentenced Monday in a Los Angeles federal courtroom to two years in prison for his involvement in a chain of deceptions designed to avoid paying $34 million he owed the IRS.

The 54-year-old Camarillo resident was ordered by U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder to pay a $5 million fine in addition to the more than $70 million he has paid to cover back taxes owed for 2000 and 2001.

Brian Hennigan, Haas' attorney, said because Haas had already pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, his client had expected the federally mandated 24-month sentence.

Hennigan said there "weren't any surprises" during Monday's court appearance.

"Mr. Haas has now paid the government more than twice the amount of taxes he attempted to avoid paying," said U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien in a written statement.

Haas, who was arrested last year, was the lead defendant in an 11-count indictment brought by a federal grand jury.

He will begin serving his sentence Jan. 14 and has requested to serve his time at the Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution, a lowsecurity prison for nonviolent offenders, located 55 miles north of Santa Barbara.

According to prosecutors, Haas was accused of orchestrating several scams in which he billed phony business expenses to bogus companies to avoid federal taxes.

Haas was the fifth defendant to admit guilt in the tax fraud case. Two of the other men who pleaded guilty are also Ventura County residents- Kenneth Greene, 53, of Simi Valley and Dennis Arthur Dupuis, 51, of Newbury Park.

The two Ventura County men, along with Robert Gene Cable, 73, of La Crescenta, who also pleaded guilty in the case, will be sentenced next year.

Investigators said the scheme began in 2000 when Haas sought to recoup nearly $9 million he had lost in a patent infringement lawsuit.

Haas and Cable were partners in a plan to buy millions of dollars of bogus industrial equipment from a company owned by Cable.

When Cable's company was paid, 98 percent of the payments were then returned to another company owned by Haas. The remaining 2 percent was given to Cable for his help in moving the money, prosecutors said.

Haas also worked with Dupuis, the former general manager of Haas Automation, to carry out an illegal money laundering scheme that moved money from Haas Automation to a company owned by coconspirator Charles Todd. The money was again filtered back to multiple bank accounts controlled by Haas, according to court records.

Todd, who was also given 2 percent of the bogus expenses, pleaded guilty to tax evasion last year. He is to be sentenced in 2008.

Haas and Dupuis also reported to the IRS $12 million in fake invoices he allegedly incurred as co-owner of a NASCAR team and another company in 2000 and 2001, investigators said.

Between the various deceits, Haas Automation claimed fraudulent federal tax deductions on more than $50 million in phony expenses, investigators said.

Federal investigators first heard of Haas' deceptive strategem when John Phillips, a former Haas Automation executive, admitted his part in the scheme to the FBI in 2001, according to court records.

Haas Automation, a 24yearold machine manufacturer, reported $740 million in revenue for 2006- almost 30 percent over the year before, according to the company's website.

The company employs more than 1,100 workers, making it one of the largest employers in Ventura County.