Entertainment News
2006-01-07
Testimony limited
in Richard Hatch tax trial
The accountant
for gay Survivor winner Richard Hatch, who
has been charged in federal court with failing to
The accountant
for gay Survivor winner Richard Hatch, who
has been charged in federal court with failing to
pay taxes on his $1 million winnings and other income, can't
testify about Hatch's accounting abilities or other
tax problems that can result from a sudden change in
income, a judge said Wednesday. Daniel Urso was
expected to testify for the defense in Hatch's upcoming
trial that the reality show winner had poor
bookkeeping abilities and was not good at keeping
track of his expenses.
Hatch's attorney,
John MacDonald, said the subject was important to the
case since the government needs to prove that Hatch
deliberately shirked his tax obligations. "It goes
ultimately for a jury to decide the issue of
willfulness," MacDonald said.
Hatch has pleaded
innocent to charges of tax evasion, filing a false tax
return, wire fraud, bank fraud, and mail fraud. But federal
prosecutors said the question for the jury will be
simply whether Hatch knowingly filed false tax
returns, and they argued in U.S. district court in
Providence that Urso shouldn't be called as an expert
witness. "What may or may not be his accounting or
bookkeeping abilities is really irrelevant to that
question," said assistant U.S. attorney Lee Vilker.
U.S. district
judge Ernest Torres agreed with prosecutors, saying the
case was not about bookkeeping. But Torres denied
prosecutors' request to prevent Urso from testifying
that the 2000 and 2001 tax returns filed by Hatch were
incorrectly prepared by his accountant at the time or that
Hatch had been working to fix his tax problems by filing
amended returns for those years.
Urso, a longtime
accountant who has prepared thousands of personal tax
returns, has reviewed Hatch's 2000 and 2001 returns but was
not his accountant at the time. He has worked with
Hatch to prepare corrected returns for those two years
but has been stymied by a lack of cooperation from
Hatch's prior accountant, lawyers said.
Jury selection in
the trial was scheduled for Tuesday. Besides the
Survivor winnings, Hatch is also accused of
omitting $327,000 he was paid to cohost a radio show and
$28,000 in rent on a property he owns in Newport from
his 2000 and 2001 tax returns. He is also accused of
misusing $36,500 in donations to his charity, Horizon
Bound, to cover personal expenses. (Eric Tucker, AP)
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