Former Globetel exec gets prison for tax scheme

By Palm Beach Business.com

FORT LAUDERDALE — The former CFO of Globetel Communications has been sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for his role in hiding the proceeds of stock sales involving company officers.

Thomas Y. Jimenez, 50, of Plantation also must serve one year of supervised release and pay nearly $588,000 in restitution. He pleaded guilty in January to one count of obstructing and impeding the due administration of the tax laws.

Jimenez served as chief financial officer of GlobeTel, a Fort Lauderdale-based publicly traded company, between 2004 and 2005.  It was his job as CFO to ensure that income-reporting forms, including W-2s and 1099s were properly prepared and filed with the IRS any time a GlobeTel officer received company stock as compensation..

 According to federal prosecutors, Jimenez failed to report to the IRS approximately $2,790,016.00 in stock compensation that GlobeTel paid to him and other corporate officers.

As part of the scheme, Jimenez used a nominee company called C&M Management Consulting Inc. to sell GlobeTel stock owned by GlobeTel corporate officers. C&M purported to give the executives a loan secured with the GlobeTel stock. Rather than holding the stock as collateral for the purported loans, C&M sold the shares and distributed the proceeds back to the executives.

As part of his plea, Jimenez admitted that he knew that the stock serving as collateral for the purported loans would be sold and the proceeds distributed to the GlobeTel execs.

A year ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued GlobeTel, Jimenez, former CEO Timothy Huff and another former CFO, Lawrence Lynch, alleging the three cooked the company books in order to inflate the value of company stock. During one period between 2004 and 2006, 80 percent of all revenue the company booked, or about $119 million, was bogus.