Wednesday, December 12, 2018
LONDON, Ky. — Dr. Werner Grentz, 69, of London, Kentucky, was sentenced on Wednesday by United States District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove to three years in federal prison, for falsely reporting his income as $0 on tax documents presented to the Internal Revenue Service for tax years 2011-2015, and for corruptly interfering with the IRS’ attempts to administer the tax laws. Dr. Grentz was also sentenced to an additional year in prison, for violations of the terms of his supervised release on a 2013 tax fraud conviction. This one-year prison term will run consecutively to Dr. Grentz’s three-year sentence, for a total of four years in prison.
Dr. Grentz was convicted in February 2018, following a jury trial in London. According to the evidence at trial, Dr. Grentz submitted false Form 1040X and Form 1040NR documents to the IRS, claiming to have received $0 in income during the years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, when in fact Dr. Grentz earned $726,148 during that time period. The IRS determined that Dr. Grentz owed taxes of $237,860 on that income which he failed to report or pay. Dr. Grentz also took steps to impede collection efforts by the IRS and county clerks.
This was not Dr. Grentz’s first conviction for tax crimes. In 2014, Dr. Grentz was convicted of tax evasion, for willfully failing to pay more than $900,000 in taxes to the IRS. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for that tax offense, and while he was on supervised release for the 2014 offense, committed the new tax crimes that resulted in his 2018 conviction. It was a violation of the terms of his supervised release to commit new federal crimes, and that violation resulted in the additional year of prison time.
In addition to his prison sentence, Dr. Grentz was ordered to pay restitution to the IRS of $237,860. He owes more than a million dollars in unpaid taxes to the IRS.
Under federal law, Grentz must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence; and upon his release, he will be under the supervision of the United States Probation Office for a term of five years.
Robert M. Duncan, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Ryan Lerner, Special Agent in Charge, IRS Criminal Investigation Cincinnati Field Office, jointly made the announcement.
The investigation was conducted by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. The United States was represented by Assistant United States Attorneys Paul McCaffrey and Neeraj Gupta.>
