Saturday, July 17, 2010 (London)
Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes lost his appeal against a three-year prison sentence today for evading more than US$ 15 million in taxes.
The court of appeal in Atlanta ruled that the judge had correctly sentenced the 47-year-old action star to a jail term for the felony. The actor’s lawyers had argued that the sentence was “unreasonable” and that he should have been granted a hearing to decide whether his trial should have been held in New York instead of Florida, reported Daily Mail online. Snipes, star of cult hits like the the Blade trilogy and Passenger 57, received the maximum sentence from a judge in Florida in 2008 for dodging federal income taxes on earnings from the peak of his career. Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington had then written to US District Court judge William Terrell Hodges asking that Snipes not be sent to prison. Woody Harrelson, who said he had known Snipes for two decades and starred alongside him in the movie Wildcats, also pleaded on his behalf. A number of other showbusiness friends, including actors, a costume designer and even a daytime TV judge, also provided glowing character references. But their appeal fell on deaf ears. Snipes was convicted of three counts of failing to file tax returns from 1999 to 2001. Snipes’ lawyers had argued that his tax advisers, Douglas P Rosile and Eddie Ray Kahn, who also received jail terms, had duped their client with a claim that there were no laws requiring him to pay tax. In a lengthy memo to the court calling for the maximum 36-month sentence, prosecutors said Snipes engaged in a decade-long “campaign of criminal tax conduct combining brazen defiance with insidious concealment” that amounted to a USD 15 million evasion and US$ 41 million in “intended harm” to the US Treasury. During the investigation by America’s tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service, Snipes was arrested at Johannesburg airport in 2008 for allegedly trying to pass through using a fake South African passport. He was arrested shortly after he was deported to the US. Read more at: http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_story.aspx?Section=Movies&ID=ENTEN20100146898&subcatg=MOVIESINDIA&keyword=hollywood&cp
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using the number/letter grid:
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
Where:
A = 1 J = 1 S = 1
B = 2 K = 2 T = 2
C = 3 L = 3 U = 3
D = 4 M = 4 V = 4
E = 5 N = 5 W = 5
F = 6 O = 6 X = 6
G = 7 P = 7 Y = 7
H = 8 Q = 8 Z = 8
I = 9 R = 9
numerology behind the news 