Rodney King’s attorney pleads guilty to not paying $2.4 million in taxes
William Grimes, the Los Angeles attorney who won a $3.8 million civil claim on behalf of police brutality victim Rodney King in 1994, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, Oct. 29, to failure to pay more than $2.4 million in taxes.
Grimes entered his plea to one federal count of tax evasion, resolving allegations that the lawyer failed to pay taxes for nearly a decade, according to a plea agreement filed in L.A. federal court.
Prosecutors said they would recommend no more than one year, 10 months in prison and up to $9.5 million in restitution during the sentencing hearing on Feb. 11.
Grimes owed the Internal Revenue Service more than $1.7 million in taxes for tax years 2010 and 2014, federal prosecutors said. The IRS tried to collect the unpaid taxes from Grimes by, among other things, levying his personal bank accounts.
In response to IRS collection efforts, from 2014 through 2020, Grimes engaged in a scheme to thwart the levies by keeping his personal bank-account balances low, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Grimes deposited the money he earned from representing clients into his law firm’s business bank accounts, then routinely purchased cashier’s checks and withdrew cash from those business bank accounts, the indictment states.
Grimes allegedly withdrew about $16 million in funds from the business accounts in cashier’s checks during those years.
Grimes also filed individual income tax returns for tax years 2018 through 2021 reporting that he owed about $700,000 in taxes. Grimes did not pay the taxes that he self-reported he owes, according to the indictment.
King, 47, died in June 2012 in an accidental drowning.