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 OCALA, Fla. (AP) - A longtime tax adviser warned Wesley Snipes he could get in trouble by hiring new accountants who said he didn't have to pay taxes, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday. In the opening statements of an expected monthlong trial, assistant U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill said the 45-year-old actor was called by Kenneth Starr, a New York money manager with several famous clients. Starr told Snipes there was no merit to the argument that he didn't have to pay taxes, and the next day sent a letter terminating his tax services, O'Neill said.
"In the '90s, Mr. Snipes was a taxpayer," O'Neill told the jury. "Something happens in the year 2000, and that stops the payment of taxes."
Snipes and two other men, Eddie Ray Kahn and Douglas P. Rosile, are charged with tax fraud and conspiracy in an eight-count grand jury indictment. Snipes is further charged with willfully failing to file tax returns from 1999 to 2004, on the advice of Kahn's tax protest groups American Rights Litigators and Guiding Light of God Ministries.
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