Westchester Town Justice Stripped of Duties After His Tax Evasion Guilty Plea
Seedorf was accused by federal prosecutors of evading payment of more than $160,000 in federal income tax over the last decade and hiding proceeds from a legal settlement.
December 09, 2019 at 04:58 PM
5 minute read
Marc Seedorf, a town justice in Westchester County who's also an attorney in the Bronx, was stripped of his caseload Monday by the state Office of Court Administration after he pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion in federal court last week.
Seedorf was accused by federal prosecutors of evading payment of more than $160,000 in federal income tax over the last decade and hiding proceeds from a legal settlement.
He also failed to file individual tax returns from 2005 to 2015, despite being required to do so, according to federal prosecutors.
Aside from his work as a personal injury attorney in the Bronx, Seedorf also earned approximately $33,000 annually for his work as a part-time justice for the town of Lewisboro in Westchester County. He's been on the bench there for more than two decades.
Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the state OCA, said Monday that Seedorf's cases will be reassigned to other judges by state court officials, and that no new cases will be assigned to him.
"Effective immediately, all judicial matters pending before Lewisboro Town Justice Marc Seedorf will be reassigned to other designated judges by the Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Courts outside of New York City," Chalfen said.
"In addition, no additional judicial matters will be assigned to Justice Seedorf," he continued.
Seedorf's fate on the bench, as of now, is sealed. Because he was convicted of a felony, he'll have to forfeit his position. That won't happen until his conviction is final, which will happen when he's sentenced. That's scheduled for March 24, 2020.
Seedorf will now also be the subject of an investigation by the state Commission of Judicial Conduct, the state's panel that reviews complaints of misconduct against the state's judges. The commission opens a probe whenever a judge is charged, or convicted of a crime.
When Seedorf is sentenced on his guilty plea next year, the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, will be tasked with removing him from office.
Neither Seedorf nor his attorney could be reached for comment about his guilty plea and judicial responsibilities Monday. Seedorf is represented by Stewart Orden, a criminal defense attorney from New York City.
In an information filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors said Seedorf incurred a federal tax liability of approximately $487,000 from 2005 to 2013.
Near the tail end of that time period, in 2012, Seedorf received a $1.5 million settlement as part of a civil lawsuit. Prosecutors did not provide details on the settlement. Seedorf asked the law firm that represented him in the litigation to keep the full amount of the settlement in a trust account, which would then be disbursed sometime down the road.
Over the next few years, Seedorf asked for the settlement to be transferred, in chunks, to accounts other than his personal banking account. That was in order to hide the source, and total amount, of the money from the Internal Revenue Service and other creditors, prosecutors said.
On one occasion, for example, Seedorf asked the law firm that represented him to wire $400,000 of the settlement to a separate trust account operated by his own law firm.
He then used that money to pay off part of his federal tax liability with the IRS, saying that he'd borrowed the money from his firm's trust account when, in reality, the funds were proceeds from his settlement.
Seedorf was asked, at one point, by an agent with the IRS whether he had received any nontaxable income from 2009 and 2013. While the settlement was received in 2012, Seedorf said he hadn't received any undisclosed income during that time.
He then stopped responding to communications from the IRS, prosecutors said. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of the Southern District of New York chided Seedorf for his conduct in a statement.
"This was conduct that would be shameful for anyone, and all the more so from an attorney and a member of the judiciary," Berman said. "Now Seedorf awaits sentencing for his crime."
Seedorf faces a maximum sentence of five years on the felony tax evasion charged, but could receive less when sentenced next March.
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