Freon Smuggler Jailed for 17 Years

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida, May 24, 2004 (ENS) - A Florida man who smuggled the ozone depleting chemical freon from Panama into the United States and failed to pay taxes on sales of the chemical was sentenced Friday to 17 years in prison.

Convicted of excise tax evasion and money laundering, Marc M. Harris also was ordered to pay a $20.3 million fine plus $6.58 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

In federal court in Ft. Lauderdale, U.S. District Judge James Cohn sentenced Harris to 204 months imprisonment, to be followed by three years supervised release, and a $20,324,560 fine. He was also ordered to pay the IRS $6,588,949.

Harris left Florida for Panama in 1989 and was returned to the United States after his arrest in Nicaragua in June 2003.

On November 24, 2003, after trial, Harris was convicted of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, conspiracy to commit money laundering and evading excise taxes.

Congress imposed excise taxes to deter the sale or use of the ozone depleting refrigerant chemical chlorofluorocarbon, commonly referred to by the trade name freon.

From 1992 through 1994, the years involved in this case, the excise tax rose from $1.67 per pound to $4.35 per pound of freon, said officials involved in the case.

Evidence introduced at trial established that Harris conspired with Aurelio Vigna, Joseph Vigna and others to evade federal excise taxes on the sale of freon to customers in South Florida.

They failed to report and remit those taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and filed phony paperwork to conceal domestic sales of freon that was illegally imported.

To hide the sales proceeds, Harris created and used domestic and foreign shell corporations and related bank accounts.

He laundered more than $8 million in proceeds generated from the freon smuggling scheme for Aurelio and Joseph Vigna by use of a series of wire transfers through Panamanian corporations and bank accounts.

As a result of the scheme, between January 1993 and June 1994, Harris evaded approximately $6.2 million in excise taxes and also helped his co-conspirators allegedly evade additional individual and corporate income taxes on the profits.

Nancy Jardini, chief of IRS Criminal Investigation, said, “Individuals who illegally sell ozone depleting refrigerant chemicals such as Freon to evade the excise taxes, not only defraud the government, but they also threaten our environment.”