A longtime Los Angeles attorney who famously represented Rodney King in a 1994 civil suit has admitted to avoiding paying more than $4 million in federal taxes over the span of two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Milton C. Grimes pleaded guilty Tuesday to one felony count of tax evasion, admitting that he didn’t pay about $1.7 million to the IRS in 2014.
As part of his plea agreement, he also acknowledged he did not pay federal income taxes for most of 23 years, beginning in 2002, totaling about $4.07 million.
According to the DOJ, Grimes “willfully evaded” paying the IRS, which attempted to regain the outstanding balance by placing levies on his personal bank accounts.
To continue to avoid paying, Grimes took payment from his clients and deposited them into his law firm’s business accounts, which he would “routinely” withdraw cash from to purchase millions of dollars’ worth of cashier’s checks in an effort to keep the money “out of reach” of the IRS, officials said.