Mojave Test Pilot School Owners Plead Guilty to Tax Evasion

Mojave’s small aerospace community has been rocked by a scandal involving two of its prominent members. The Bakersfield Californian reports:

A Tehachapi couple who owns a flight school in Mojave pleaded guilty Monday to filing a false tax return related to more than $1 million hidden in foreign bank accounts.

Sean Roberts and Nadia Roberts pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii of the Eastern District of California after they were caught maintaining numerous offshore bank accounts they failed to pay taxes on, according to a plea agreement filed in federal court Wednesday.

The Robertses own and operate the National Test Pilot School and Flight Research Inc. in Mojave. National Test Pilot School is a non-profit educational institute that trains test pilots from domestic and foreign aerospace industries and governments. Flight Research Inc. owns and maintains most of the aircraft used by the school.

Beverly Hills tax attorney Edward Robbins Jr., who represents the Robertses, said they “admit that they did what they did, and they’re sorry that they did it.”

They are cooperating with an ongoing criminal investigation into the banks and a cadre of management and trust companies that helped them hide the money in part by creating bogus legal entities, Robbins said.

Both Flight Research Inc. and the National Test Pilot School are located at the Mojave Air & Space Port.

Apparently, the Robertses were ratting out by, of all people, the Swiss. Two years ago, the Swiss bank UBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government under which it turned over information about the Robertses and other American clients who stashed money overseas. Due to legal wrangling, the information was not released until the following year.

The Robertses are free on bail until sentencing on Sept. 6. They face maximum sentences of three years each.