Ohio Attorney Suspended for Helping Clients Evade Taxes

An Ohio attorney who was found guilty of a felony for helping clients try to evade federal taxes was suspended for two years by the state’s highest court.

His actions violated professional ethics rules prohibiting lawyers from helping clients break the law, the Supreme Court of Ohio said in its Nov. 27 opinion. The court also said Gregory Thomas Plesich of Akron violated rules that forbid lawyers from committing acts that reflect adversely on the legal profession and from acting dishonestly,

In 2009, Plesich began representing a husband and wife in a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service, according to the court. He received notices of outstanding tax liabilities and collection actions involving either or both spouses.

Plesich deposited two checks from them totaling almost $200,000 into his client trust account in 2013. The money was not payment for legal services. He then wrote 29 checks from that account over the course of a year ranging in amounts from $3,000 to $7,500 to the wife.

In the disciplinary hearing following his conviction and sentencing in federal court, Plesich alleged that he didn’t issue those checks to help the couple evade payment of their federal taxes. But he admitted that he accepted the checks and then paid the clients back upon their request “without questioning them or discussing with them the purpose of the transactions,” the court said.

By doing so, Plesich stipulated, the jury at his federal court trial determined that he closed his eyes “to what was obvious.” He also admitted that his actions were “absolutely 100 percent wrong,” the court noted.

In imposing the sanction, the court said Plesich didn’t benefit from his actions or try to evade his own tax liabilities. He has never been disciplined in his 46-year legal career and was very cooperative with the disciplinary board, it said.

But there were aggravating factors including that Plesich “engaged in a pattern of misconduct by issuing the 29 checks over a one-year period,” and misused his client trust account, the court said.

The case is Akron Bar Ass’n v. Plesich, 2019 BL 456952, Ohio, No. 2019-0806, 11/27/19.