Is there a tax dodger in the house?

A federal jury has returned guilty verdicts on all counts against Dr. James Francis Murphy and his wife, Denise Christine Murphy, for their decade-long dodging of taxes. They practiced osteopathic medicine in Encinitas and Omaha, Nebraska, and in some years made as much as $1 million, while paying almost no taxes.

To evade taxes, they used a number of gimmicks: a bogus trust; claiming they were not citizens of the U.S.; fraudulently presenting bonds and notes they claimed were worth hundreds of millions of dollars as tax payments; fraudulently claiming that the money they paid to credit card companies, utilities, and vendors were actually withholdings of federal income taxes, entitling them to refunds; and claiming that the then–secretary of the treasury was their fiduciary who was responsible for paying their taxes.

They will appear for sentencing September 14.