Date: Aug. 28, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the Department of Justice, Tax Division announced that Jill Moran, of Conyngham, Pennsylvania, appeared in federal district court today and pleaded guilty to a three-count criminal information charging her with failing to pay individual income taxes for calendar years 2016, 2017, and 2018, in connection with substantial legal fees she earned as the owner and operator of the Powell Law Group, P.C., a Luzerne County-based law firm, and as a member of the Trust Advisory Committee for the mass tort litigation described below. Moran was released on an unsecured bond while awaiting her sentencing. According to court documents and statements made in court, Moran did not pay individual income taxes for tax year 2016 on approximately $1,215,000 she received, and also did not pay individual income taxes for substantial income that she received in tax years 2017 and 2018. In total, Moran caused a tax loss to the IRS of between $250,000 and $550,000. Below is a detailed statement of facts that accompanied the guilty plea. In 2009, Moran became the Managing Director and President of the Powell Law Group, when the founder and owner of the firm, Robert J. Powell, was suspended from the practice of law and ultimately disbarred. Moran and Powell agreed, however, that she would collect 10% and he would collect 90% of any future fees the firm earned after the payment of expenses. Specifically, the Powell Law Group represented thousands of plaintiffs in a mass tort litigation that settled for approximately $5.15 billion in 2015, from which the firm was expected to receive approximately $120 million in attorneys’ fees. Prior to the attorneys’ fees disbursement, the Powell Law Group and its co-counsel used those future legal fees as collateral to obtain a series of loans totaling over $125 million. In 2014 and 2015, Moran received two disbursements of $500,000 each from those loan proceeds. Moreover, Moran received approximately $215,000 for her work on the Trust Advisory Committee. In June 2016, most of the attorneys’ fees were finally disbursed and the loans were repaid. Nevertheless, Moran did not pay taxes on both the $1,000,000 she received in attorney’s fees that year, and the $215,000 she received for her work on the Trust Advisory Committee. Likewise, in both 2017 and 2018, Moran received substantial income, but nonetheless did not pay taxes on it. On Aug. 14, 2024, Robert Powell pleaded guilty to evading taxes on the millions of dollars in income he received in legal fees from the mass tort litigation. Powell awaits sentencing. "Running a business is not a license to avoid paying taxes,” said IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) Acting Special Agent in Charge Denise Leuenberger. “Moran’s misconduct by not reporting her income cheated all Americans, since we all pay our fair share for the government services and protections that we enjoy." The cases were investigated by CI’s Scranton office. Senior Litigation Counsel Phillip J. Caraballo, Tax Division Trial Attorney Alexandra Fleszar, and Criminal Division Chief Bruce D. Brandler are prosecuting the cases. The maximum penalty under federal law is one year in prison for each failure to pay count, a term of supervised release following imprisonment, a fine and restitution. A sentence following a finding of guilt is imposed by the Judge after consideration of the applicable federal sentencing statutes and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
