UBS Clients Receive 1-Year Prison Term for Hiding Accounts

Sean Roberts and Nadia Roberts, former clients of UBS AG (UBSN), were sentenced to a year in prison and $3.2 million in fines and restitution for hiding millions of dollars in secret offshore bank accounts, the Justice Department said.

The two California residents, who owned test pilot training schools, filed false tax returns from 2004 to 2008 and failed to report a secret Swiss account at UBS, the agency said in an e- mail. The couple transferred more than $1.2 million from their company to a UBS account and falsely reported the transfers as deductible interest payments on their corporate income tax returns, the department said. The two pleaded guilty last year.

Edward Robbins, the Roberts’ attorney, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the sentence.

The case is U.S. v. Roberts, 11-00199, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California (Fresno).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net