A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a 71-year-old scientist to two years in prison for a tax scheme that involved naming his dog and cat as directors of a company.
The judge rejected Mathew Zuckerman’s pleas for freedom so he could go on inventing environmental tools to save the planet.
“Dr. Zuckerman is going to have to wait for a time before he can pursue those innovative inventions and products,” U.S. District Judge Robert E. Blackburn said.
Blackburn also ordered Zuckerman, who previously pleaded guilty to a single count of attempting to evade taxes, to pay the IRS $694,000 in income taxes dating back to the 1990s. Earlier in the day, Blackburn sentenced Zuckerman’s wife, Sandra, to a three-year-probation sentence on a similar charge and ordered her to repay the IRS $113,000.
The judge’s decision came after Zuckerman gave a lengthy — and at times, tearful and passionate — plea to Blackburn, explaining that he is working on projects that would recycle water used in oil fracking for immediate reuse and turn cow fat into biodegradable oil. To prove his worth, Zuckerman told the judge he once drank a cup of water directly after it left a sewage plant treated by a process he helped invent.
“I ask the court to let me make up for my transgressions by letting me continue to serve the community,” Zuckerman said. “I think I can do a lot.”
But federal prosecutor Timothy Neff said the scientist has not only invented things for the benefit of mankind but ways to bilk the government.
“There is a huge disconnect. … I’ll put it this way — a contempt for the IRS,” Neff said. He said no man no matter how important his work may skirt his obligation to the government. “Dr. Zuckerman played fast and loose with the rules,” Neff said.
Zuckerman’s tax-avoidance schemes included naming his dog and cat as directors of a company called “Hyperpanel University,” a Nevada business, which was listed as the owner of a $1.2 million Woody Creek home near Aspen. The home was actually owned by Mathew and Sandra Zuckerman. Another shell business owned the deed of their $1.8 million Tuluca Lake, Calif., mansion.
“This is an extremely serious offense. … There is a deviousness to all of that as well,” Blackburn said. “Dr. Zuckerman is one lucky man that he was only charged with one offense.”
The judge told Sandra Zuckerman that although her husband was mostly to blame, “you are not entirely an innocent spouse.”