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from www.santafenewmexican.com – A Santa Fe woman has been sentenced to eight months in prison for evading federal taxes on income from online pornography.
Carolynne Tilga, 51, pleaded guilty a year ago to six counts of tax evasion, three of filing false tax reports and one of conspiracy.
Her husband, Michael Chandler, 52, pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge. He was sentenced to probation Friday at the same hearing before U.S. District Judge James Browning, who has ordered them to repay $1.7 million in back taxes.
Charges of filing false tax returns and conspiracy against the couple’s bookkeeper, Helen Geer of Santa Fe, were dropped last year after the judge determined Geer’s illness would keep her from participating in her defense.
According to federal prosecutors, Tilga was a minority owner in a Canadian-based Internet business that bills for people who provide online pornography.
The 2009 indictment charged Tilga concealed income from this business by funneling it through foreign corporations and used it to buy a $1.38 million home in Las Campanas, a $1.85 million residence in Kilauea, Hawaii, other properties in Taos Ski Valley, Telluride, Colo., and Aspen, Colo., and three automobiles.
In a memorandum to Judge Browning earlier this month, Tilga asked for leniency so she could continue to home-school her daughter and to take her horseback riding and skiing.
The 15-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with learning problems and no private school in Santa Fe could help her, Tilga wrote. Although she considered public school, “We felt that it would be a disaster to her self-confidence, her potential learning track, and mining her raw intelligence,” she wrote.
So, Tilga wrote she began looking into home-schooling for both the daughter with learning difficulties and her younger sister. Not only did she find it effective, she wrote, but the older daughter’s “limited attention span” improved when she “could take a break to ride her pony.” She wrote that skiing and participating in ski races have given her daughter “a sense of empowerment and self-confidence.”
“There are so many concerns (and fears) I have for [my daughter] if I am not available to continue our home-schooling program,” Tilga wrote. “My husband, Michael, does not have the time, background, or patience to step in even for a short period.”
Federal prosecutors responded that Judge Browning should deny Tilga’s “untimely” request for leniency. “While it is unfortunate that Tilga’s daughter suffers from these maladies, they are in themselves neither rare nor unusual,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Gerson.