BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
After a two-month trial and a week of deliberations, a federal jury in Cincinnati on Monday convicted three Ohioans of conspiracy to frustrate the collection of income taxes.
Prosecutors Dana Boente and William Hunt said Daniel K. Stewart, and his wife, Donna, of Colerain Township, stopped filing annual tax returns and used various means, including illegal trusts, to hide income from their business, Danco Transmissions Inc.
Prosecutors said co-conspirator Joe Sabino acted as trustee, although the Stewarts controlled and used the trusts.
Jurors also convicted the Stewarts, both 55, of evading taxes in 1991, 1992 and 1993.
The jury acquitted Mr. Stewart of tax evasion in 1994 but convicted Mrs. Stewart.
Mr. Sabino, 51, of London, Ohio, was not charged with tax evasion. Sentencing was set for Jan. 8 by U.S. District Judge Herman J. Weber.
Whether any of the defendants is eligible for probation will depend, in part, on how much money their conspiracy and unpaid taxes cost the government.
If they are ineligible for probation, they probably will be sentenced to something less than five years, the maximum for any of the charges.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, defendants rarely get consecutive terms where no violence is involved.
All three also could be fined and ordered to pay back taxes and penalties.
Meanwhile, they are free on bond.
When they were indicted, Mrs. Stewart denied that she and her husband were tax protesters. Rather, she said they were targeted by the government because they once belonged to a tax protest organization called the Pilot Connection.
She said they resigned from the group several years ago.
In an earlier battle with the Internal Revenue Service in 1994, Mr. Stewart claimed he was a citizen of Ohio, not of the United States, and the IRS had no jurisdiction over him as a non-resident alien.
