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Former IRS Investigator-cum-Accounting Professor Claims He Took Money from 18 Year-old Prostitute ‘To Protect Her,’ Denies Pimp Status

Accounting professors can be a strange lot. This is known. Whether they’re getting ejected from basketball games, taking off their shirts for money or taking their pants for free, there is no shortage of curious behavior.

Then there’s the story of Kemp Shiffer, who was a part-time professor at the University of Nevada-Reno and IRS investigator. Prof Shiffer was arrested on August 3rd when he collected $400 from a 18 year-old prostitute:

The woman told police that before she began prostituting for Kemp Shiffer, he made her “try out” for the job by performing multiple sex acts on him, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Reno Justice Court to support his Aug. 3 arrest.

After Shiffer took the money from the 18-year-old Eureka, Calif., woman at the Peppermill Resort Casino Spa just before 10 p.m. Aug. 3, detectives of the regional Street Enforcement Team arrested him.

“He spontaneously stated ‘I am not a pimp. I didn’t collect her money as her pimp. I collected it to protect her,’” according to the affidavit filed last week against the 58-year-old.

Apparently this isn’t Shiffer’s first attempt at “protection” as the Reno Gazette-Journal also reports that he quit the IRS after an investigation into his attempt to use “his authority and his badge to secure women to work as prostitutes for him.”

The reader who pointed us to the story simply had this to say, “And he was my favorite accounting professor when I was in school… who knew?”

Hopefully none of your female classmates.

Records: Retired IRS investigator charged with pandering said ‘I am not a pimp’ [RGJ]

Which Accounting Firm Has a High-Ranking Partner Whose Hooker Habit Got Him in a Bit of Trouble?

Actually, there might be a few of them but we’re talking about a very specific instance. A partner with a hectic international travel schedule got taken to the cleaners by his wife after she discovered that he was keeping company on the side while on his business trips, including the aforementioned hookers. And as luck would have it, some of the court documents found their way into our inbox. We’ve clipped some of the juicy parts for you:


It should be noted that this particular situation took place a number of years ago and proceedings were still being wrapped up fairly recently. Now, the hookers angle is especially salacious (which we like) but what does a situation like this say about the pressure that many globetrotting partners are under? The firms demand a lot from their top leaders and a lifestyle of high pressure and international travel can wear on a person. If whores on the cheap happen to be in close proximity to your hotel…well, it’s not inconceivable that some partners may want to blow off some steam. Landing an exotic piece of tail to help you cope with the stress while traveling on business may be a lot of fun but if you have a wife and kids and home, that’s where things get can complicated, and in this case expensive, as the following indicates:

And we didn’t even mention the possibility of the spreading around the clap. No one wins there.

Eliot Spitzer Would Like You to Find Your Spine

Noted john and co-star of Parker & Spitzer, Eliot Spitzer, has a few choice words for everyone out there that helped facilitate all the corporate malfeasance from the last few years. Specifically, when your clients want to do something that you know is sketch and you gave them a pass before? That shit has to stop. And not with the attitude of “pretty please with sugar on top – no – Sugar, the brunette from last time.” For real, this shit has to stop.

“Facilitators — and we’re all part of it — lawyers, investment bankers and accountants. Our purpose is to be hired to justify the actions that are being taken by CEOs and others to run their businesses, and over time what has happened is that we have lost our backbone. We have lost our willingness to stand up and say, ‘Stop.’ There are a bunch of reasons for this. I’ve been in private practice and I know how those pressures are. We don’t like to look at our clients and say, ‘No, you can’t do that. I’m not writing an opinion letter that justifies that valuation.’ We don’t like to write a letter to the CEO saying, ‘No, you don’t deserve a 50 percent bonus.’ Those things don’t happen very often because we succumb to the pressures of our clients.”

Spitzer Calls Accountants ‘Facilitators’ for Corporate Abuse [AT]

Amsterdam’s Hookers Are Pretty Much Okay with Finally Having to Pay Taxes

Which doesn’t come as much of a surprise since the Dutch aren’t the rabid purtian, anti-tax type that exist in some countries.

“It’s a good thing that they’re doing this,” said Samantha, a statuesque blond Dutchwoman in a white leather dress who offers her services from behind one of the hundreds of red-curtained windows in the heart of the city’s ancient center. “It’s a job like any other and we should pay taxes,” she said.

Plus! Since these audits will be as boring as expected, there may be an opportunity to drum up a little business:

Prostitutes were told they would be audited in typically bureaucratic fashion, with a notice addressed “to landlords and window prostitutes in Amsterdam” published last week in the city’s main newspaper. “Agents of the Tax Service will walk through various elements of your business administration with you, such as prices, staffing, agendas and calendars,” the notice said. “The facts will be used at a later date in reviewing your returns.”

Or as a short, stocky, bald man once said, “I want details and I want them right now!”

Here’s a Visual: A 64 Year-old Accountant in Bed, Naked, with a Madame, Surrounded by Cash

In Britain, of course:

A respected accountant who turned his home into a brothel was caught in the act when police swooped and found him naked in bed with his Chinese mistress, surrounded by money.


“Respected accountant” Leslie Baleham received a year in prison after his house effectively became a brothel that managed to serve 400 men during a three-month stakeout, according to a report in the Daily Mail. How would an otherwise mild-mannered accountant get tangled up in such a mess? Love, of course!

The court was told that Baleham had been ‘smitten’ with his younger woman – who was a main figure in running the brothel.
Adrian Reynolds, prosecuting, said: ‘Never was the relationship between sex and money more clearly to be seen.’ [Ed. note: Oh, British wit.] The pair, who ran the brothel for two years, had a joint bank account and had paid in £57,000 – including £7,000 he had made in rent. Harry Bowyer, mitigating, told the court that Baleham was not involved in the day-to-day running of the brothel, and was effectively just a landlord. He said: ‘Baleham felt he was having a relationship with her. Now he feels he has been used by her. He is now divorced from his wife.’

Arrested in bed with a madame called Ping Ping, the ‘respected’ accountant who turned his home into a brothel [Daily Mail]

Feds Not Amused by Area Man’s Crank Calls to Coast Guard, Filing of Tax Returns for Hookers

So. You’re 22 years old, you operate an Internet escort service out of your house and you’re feeling a little bored. What’s a man-child to do?

Well, making the assumption that you spend a lot of your spare time watching old Crank Yankers episodes, you might ring up the Coast Guard and tell them a shuttle at the Kennedy Space Center is about to be under attack.

Or if that doesn’t get the fired stoked in your plums, try calling them up again to say that your yacht is sinking off the coast of New York with ’10 souls’ on board.

Yeah! That’s the ticket:

Nicholas Barbati of Daytona Beach twice made the U.S. Coast Guard scramble to check out false information he gave them on separate occasions — including reports of a threat from the sea headed for a space shuttle about to take off from the Kennedy Space Center, federal officials said Tuesday.

Barbati, 22, also called the Coast Guard in Washington, D.C., to tell them his 32-foot yacht was sinking off the coast of New York, investigators said.

Oh. And about those escorts, “Barbati pleaded guilty to the two hoax cases in August, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Then, in October, Barbati pleaded guilty to filing false claims with the IRS. He filed income tax returns for prostitutes employed by his Internet escort service operating out of his house, investigators said.”

Now you may be thinking that Barbati was just a little mischievous and he just made some poor decisions. Let us dispel that notion from your head right now:

Barbati’s computer was seized and it showed Barbati had made 584 other harassing and hoax calls. Between May and June 2009, Barbati made “swatting” calls to law enforcement dispatch centers around the world so dispatchers could not identify where the calls came from, investigators said.

In one case, Barbati told dispatchers he was going to kill a baby if the police did not arrive soon and gave a fictitious address, the release said.

But back to the hookers for second – if you’re going to provide employer-prepared tax returns, the least you could do is prepare the them accurately. You don’t want the Better Business Bureau on your case.

Prank calls to Coast Guard, dispatch centers land man in federal prison [DBNJ]

Toys R Us Accountant Will Probably Not Have Much Success Asking Hookers to Return Stolen Money

Back in fall we mentioned a run-of-the-mill whore-supporting accountant that pleaded guilty to ripping off Toys R Us to the tune £3.7 million. Paul Hopes is described as a ‘Walter Mitty character’ by the Telegraph who can now fantasize about what Oz character he is, now that he’s spending 7 years in prison.

Hopes got more bad news recently as he learned that he has to repay £3.36 million of the £3.68 million from Geoffrey.

If he fails to repay the money, he see his sentence more than doubled with an extra 10 years in prison.

The court heard that Hopes, an “accounts payable manager” at the retailer, diverted regular instalments of £300,000 to an account of a fictitious toy manufacturer which he controlled.

He named the fund Dunbar Associates after a prostitute with whom he had become besotted and to whom he eventually handed a total of more than £1.5 million pounds.

He spent at least £2.4 million of the money he stole on five female escorts in all.

That’s a bitch about the additional 10 years if doesn’t repay. But we’re sure that he placed the remaining £900k into a safe, no-load mutual fund so he’ll be able to at start paying at least part of it back ASAP. The sensible accountant in him had to have made one decision with stolen money.

As for the rest of it, we don’t know how successful Johns are at getting refunds in circumstances such as these but if those girls were 100% satisfaction guaranteed, he’ll have to explore other options.

Toys R Us accountant ordered to pay back £3.4m after escort girl fraud [Telegraph]

Is the Shortage of Good Accountants in the Sex Industry an Opportunity?

Okay my friends, this is a serious problem in our country that needs addressed. The vast shortage of competent, professional, tax advisors and accountants for escort service businesses, brothels, and your run-of-the-mill houses of ill repute can go on no longer. If not for the business opportunity, then for the good of your fellow Americans and maybe your state’s dire fiscal situation.


Today we learned that the one of the proprietors of Companions, “a call-out escort service” in Salt Lake City that was convicted of one count of tax evasion. Jodi Hoskins and her husband Roy were both convicted of dodging taxes (he in May 2009) for the year 2002. They managed to underreport their gross receipts by $1,204,354 which resulted in evaded taxes of $485k-ish. As you can tell, this is a bit of a problem. And with all challenges/problems/giant pains in the ass, therein lies an opportunity.

Our position is that these businesses simply cannot go on without more accountants and tax professionals stepping up to help these pillars of the business community run their whorehouses better. This means you, GC readers. Your knowledge of the double-entry accounting, inventory, derivatives, and payroll will be invaluable for these entrepreneurs and their employees.

Plus! If more of these businesses are in compliance with state and federal taxes, that’s one more step to states becoming fiscally solvent AND Tim Geithner can give the cash printing machine break. Everyone wins!

Escort Service Operator Convicted of Tax Evasion [Web CPA]
Companions Website [Warning: NSFW]

At Blackwater, Strippers and Hookers are Legitimate Expenses

Allegedly of course!

It’s bad enough when even the Iraqis are saying GTFO but that’s exactly what’s happened to about 250 ex-Blackwater employees still lingering around Iraq. “I don’t think the Iraqi government is willing to have any Blackwater member, even if they are working in other companies,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told CNN in January.”

But it isn’t just the Iraqis with a Blackwater bone to pick – former Blackwater employees allege the security firm hired strippers, prostitutes, and “incompetent personnel” to defraud authorities while working security details in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in post-Katrina Louisiana.


WTF is going on here? If you’re going to rip off the federal government, I guess it’s good to get your money’s worth, especially if you know their internal controls are for shit.

CNN:

Melan Davis, who was involved in record-keeping, said Blackwater billed the government for prostitution services in Afghanistan from a Filipino female, whose name was on Blackwater’s payroll roster under a category called “Morale Welfare Recreation.”

She said Blackwater billed the woman’s plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States.

The lawsuit also said a vendor being paid for “cleaning services” in Louisiana was providing strippers.

Blackwater spokespeople (the company is now known as Xe, though we won’t pontificate as to why another rebranding might be appropriate at this time) claim Davis must be trippin’. Strippers? Hookers? Fake receipts? No way!

“The allegations are without merit and the company will vigorously defend against this lawsuit. It is noteworthy that the government has declined to intervene in this action,” Xe told CNN.

This is not the first time Blackwater has been accused of defrauding the government; California’s Henry Waxman (D) accused the contractor of running a tax scheme to avoid paying what his staffers estimated as $15.5 million in Social Security and Medicare taxes, $15.8 million federal income tax withholding and $500,000 in unemployment taxes between May 2006 and March 2007.

So? What’s worse? Not paying taxes or expensing “Morale Welfare Recreation” on Uncle Sam’s dime?