Glastonbury Lawyer Sentenced In Million-Dollar Tax Fraud Case: Feds

GLASTONBURY, CT — A Glastonbury lawyer has been ordered to prison in a federal tax fraud case.

Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, said that Deron D. Freeman, 47, of Glastonbury, was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden in Bridgeport to 24 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release, for tax fraud offenses.

According to the evidence presented during a bench trial in October and November of 2021, Freeman owned and operated The Law Offices of Deron Freeman in Hartford and practiced primarily in the areas of personal injury and criminal law.

Between 2006 and 2010, Freeman fell "severely behind" on his federal tax payments and failed to pay his overdue tax balance, despite multiple notices of delinquent taxes and the imposition of payment and interest by the IRS, case records show.

In 2010, the IRS initiated a collection action against Freeman for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 tax years.

In 2011, soon after Freeman entered into a payment plan with the IRS, he began using a bank account in the name of a third party to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to protect the funds from IRS scrutiny, case records show.

Avery said that, by June 2012, Freeman made sufficient tax payments so that the IRS removed a lien against him for the 2008 tax year. Shortly thereafter, Freeman transferred more than $248,000 from the third-party account to his personal money market account, according to case records. Freeman subsequently filed false tax returns for 2011, 2012 and 2013 and failed to pay taxes on approximately $950,000 in income in those years, and also "willfully failed" to pay significant taxes owed for the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 tax years, according to case records.

The evidence at trial revealed that Freeman spent lavishly on cars and watercraft and, between 2012 and 2016, spent approximately $1.5 million to build a new home.

Bolden ordered Freeman to pay $357,062 in restitution to the IRS and was fined $15,000.

On April 18, Bolden found Freeman guilty of three counts of making and subscribing a false tax return, and four counts of failure to pay income tax.

Freeman, who is released on a $100,000 bond, is required to report to prison on Sept. 12.