TRENTON, New Jersey, February 10, 2025 (ENS) – A New Jersey accountant was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for his role in the promotion and sale of abusive syndicated conservation easement tax shelters. Over at least six years, the tax shelter scheme resulted in over $1.3 billion in fraudulent tax deductions and caused over $400 million in total tax loss to the Internal Revenue Service.
Court documents and statements made in court show that Ralph Anderson was a Certified Public Accountant and tax return preparer working for accounting firms in New Jersey and New York.
From 2013 to 2019, Anderson promoted and sold tax deductions to his high-income clients in the form of units in illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters created by convicted co-conspirators Jack Fisher and James Sinnott.
A legal conservation easement is a voluntary, legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limits uses of the land to protect its conservation values. If donated, conservation easements may provide valuable tax benefits to landowners.
Conservation easements can be effective tools to protect land, often at lower cost to land trusts and public agencies, according to the National Conservation Easement Database.
Conservation easements do keep land in private ownership, continuing to provide economic benefits to the area, but conservation easements do not automatically make properties open to the public.
Anderson knew that, contrary to law, transactions related to the illegal tax shelters he was peddling lacked economic substance and that his high-income clients purchased units at his recommendation only to obtain a tax deduction on their tax returns.
The charitable deductions purchased by clients were derived from the donation of land with a conservation easement or the land itself to a charity, and the deductions were based on fraudulently inflated appraisals for the donated land.
Anderson and the promoters promised the clients a so-called ratio of “4.5 to 1” in charitable deductions for every dollar paid into the tax shelter.
In some instances, to make it appear that his clients had joined the partnerships before the date of the conservation easement donation, which was necessary to claim the tax benefits, Anderson and his co-conspirators also instructed and caused clients to falsely backdate documents, including subscription agreements and checks related to the partnerships.
Each year from 2013 to 2019, Anderson and his co-conspirators assisted clients with claiming these false deductions on their tax returns.
In total, Anderson assisted in preparing tax returns for clients that claimed over $9.3 million in false charitable deductions based on backdated documents, which caused a tax loss to the United States of nearly $3 million.
Between 2016 and 2019, Anderson earned over $300,000 in commissions for promoting and selling the illegal tax shelters to his clients. Anderson also claimed false tax deductions for charitable contributions generated from the syndicated conservation easement tax shelters he received as “free units” on his own returns and fraudulently reduced his own taxes on the income he earned from the scheme.
In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Shipp for the District of New Jersey ordered Anderson to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $3,543,005.53 in total restitution to the IRS and Small Business Administration.
After being convicted on all counts after a trial in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Anderson’s co-conspirators, Jack Fisher and James Sinnott, were sentenced to 25 and 23 years in prison, respectively.
The fraudulent syndicated conservation easement tax shelter scheme created and promoted by Fisher and Sinnott resulted in over $1.3 billion in fraudulent tax deductions and caused over $400 million in total tax loss to the IRS.
Nine additional defendants pleaded guilty to criminal conduct related to the syndicated conservation easement tax shelter scheme. These other defendants include appraiser Walter Douglas “Terry” Roberts and Certified Public Accountants Stein Agee, Corey Agee, James Benkoil, Victor Smith, Herbert Lewis and William Tomasello. In addition, attorneys Randall Lenz and Vi Bui pleaded guilty to their roles in this scheme.
Featured image: Legal conservation easement boundary sign in Indiana protects agricultural land. 2024, (Photo courtesy U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service)
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