Jeremy Lundin was sentenced to 110 months in prison earlier this year and his wife, Alex Lundin, was sentenced to 24 months, as a result of federal charges against the Lake Minnetonka-area couple over more than $1 million they took from individual investors in a Ponzi scheme.
The IRS and federal prosecutors said they used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle.
The Lundins were among 38 Minnesotans indicted or sentenced for federal tax crimes, according to the 2018 annual report of the IRS. The average sentence was 45 months and restitution ordered was $11 million.
Nationally, IRS investigators involved in criminal cases identified $9.7 billion in tax fraud and $10.4 billion in financial-crime proceeds.
"The IRS Criminal Investigation Division in Minnesota has worked … to investigate and prosecute those who violate our tax system as evidenced by the investigations brought forward to the Department of Justice this year," Gabriel Grchan, special agent in charge of the Chicago field office that oversees the Minnesota office, said in a prepared statement.
Vicki Petricka, a longtime IRS special agent based in St. Paul, said the purpose of the agency is to help people voluntarily file accurate returns.
About 70 percent of taxpayers in 2016, received a refund from the IRS of about $3,000.
The yawning federal budget deficit of nearly $800 billion last fiscal year is due to more spending and the recent corporate tax cuts. The IRS estimates the "tax gap," at $450 billion-plus; what the U.S. Treasury loses annually from noncompliance and cheating.
