In the 1980s, New York real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley renovated her palatial weekend home in Connecticut. But she stiffed the contractors. They sued her, and they sent some documents to the New York Post that showed she was billing some of the work to her businesses.
That triggered a federal criminal tax fraud investigation. In the end, some United States Attorney named, um ... I think, Giuliani—is that how you spell it?—prosecuted her.
A jury convicted her of one count of conspiracy to defraud the US, three counts of tax evasion, three counts of filing false personal tax returns, sixteen counts of assisting in the filing of false corporate and partnership tax returns, and ten counts of mail fraud.
On Tax Day, April 15, 1992, she reported to a federal prison and served nineteen months.
After prison, she led the rest of her life in relative isolation; her few friends included Imelda Marcos and Manuel Noriega.
She died in 2007 at the age of 87. She left the bulk of her estate, which had dropped to $12 million, to her little Maltese, named Trouble. A probate judge knocked the dog's share of the estate down to $2 million.
The dog died in 2011, at the age of 12.
abcnews.go.com/US/leona-helms…
abcnews.go.com/US/leona-helms…
Tweeting all this for no particular reason.
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