Some former employees of the failed MyCFO, the financial service company started during boom to cater to wealth individuals, are subjects of criminal investigation for proposing sham tax shelters to its clients.
The WSJ has the story about MyCFO, its demise, and the shadow hanging over those who pushed the tax shelter — and some of the clients that used it.
In particular, the story focuses on the role of some key lawyers at the company, who aggressively proposed the shelter. It also focuses on John Doerr, a well known venture capitalist and lead investor who in email citations from 2001 appeared to applaud the company for pursuing the shelter, according to the WSJ. The practice was only ruled invalid by the IRS only 2002, even if it had always been considered shady by some others.
The financial backers and board members of myCFO were Silicon Valley royalty. They included James H. Clark, co-founder of Netscape Communications and Silicon Graphics; John Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc.; Thomas Jermoluk, former chairman of Excite@Home; and former Netscape boss James Barksdale. The firm’s outside legal counsel was Larry Sonsini, lawyer to Silicon Valley’s stars.
5 Comments
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C said:
the sad thing is these scumbags will still get in some more VC deals in the future. Shame on you, Silicon Valley
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E said:
Actually, the sad part about this is that the investors in myCFO made money off the deal while all of the employees were laid off and some executives were even sued for their severance pay…how do these people look in the mirror and feel good about the way they treat human beings?
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VWT said:
John Doerr’s recent public “tears” before peers at the TED conference might possibly emote from that day’s WSJ Article about myCFO’s “AWESOME” tax dodge, that he and others are dodging responsibility for, and for their ripping off their clients for millions each.
Curious coincidence: that same Front Page Wall Street Journal WSJ News Article about myCFO — was then (and still is) blocked (censored) from Google News Search…
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T said:
myCFO article text “Fling with tax shelters haunts Silicon Valley” By PETER WALDMAN is posted by AP on AOL at (but only wsj.com has supporting documentation links).
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/fling-with-tax-shelters-haunts-silicon/n20070306102709990001
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F said:
Curious this Wall Street Journal Investigative Report on myCFO can not be found in Google or Google News. The version that “was” posted on AOL News by Associated Press International has now been censored from AOL. This WSJ News Report can (for the moment) still be found at: http://toodumbtolivearchive.blogspot.com/2007/03/jim-clark-mycfo-inc-tax-sheltering.html
