July 28, 2022
Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that Deron D. Freeman, of Glastonbury, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport to 24 months of imprisonment, followed by one year of supervised release, for tax fraud offenses.
According the evidence presented during a bench trial in October and November 2021, Freeman is an attorney who has owned and operated The Law Offices of Deron Freeman in Hartford. Freeman has practiced primarily in the areas of personal injury and criminal law. Between 2006 and 2010, Freeman fell severely behind on his federal tax payments and failed to pay his overdue tax balance, despite multiple notices of delinquent taxes and the imposition of payment and interest by the IRS. In 2010, the IRS initiated a collection action against Freeman for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 tax years.
In 2011, soon after Freeman entered into a payment plan with the IRS, he began using a bank account in the name of a third party to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to protect the funds from IRS scrutiny. By June 2012, Freeman made sufficient tax payments so that the IRS removed a lien against Freeman for the 2008 tax year. Shortly thereafter, Freeman transferred more than $248,000 from the third-party account to his personal money market account. Freeman subsequently filed false tax returns for 2011, 2012 and 2013, failing to pay taxes on approximately $950,000 in income in those years, and also willfully failed to pay significant taxes owed for the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 tax years.
The evidence at trial revealed that Freeman spent lavishly on cars and watercraft and, between 2012 and 2016, spent approximately $1.5 million constructing a new home.
Judge Bolden ordered Freeman to pay $357,062 in restitution to the IRS and was fined $15,000.
On April 18, 2022, Judge Bolden found Freeman guilty of three counts of making and subscribing a false tax return, and four counts of failure to pay income tax.
Freeman who is released on a $100,000 bond, is required to report to prison on September 12, 2022.
This investigation was conducted by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation Division. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Susan L. Wines and Christopher W. Schmeisser.