Houston lawyer Carlos Kepke dies of suicide on eve of tax evasion trial
Houston lawyer Carlos Kepke has died just a day before he was set to stand trial for allegedly helping the private equity scion Robert Smith hide millions from the IRS.
The 83-year-old tax lawyer died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at home in a bedroom on Sunday, Bloomberg News reported, citing the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
“The Court is advised that defendant Kepke has passed away,” U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco said in an order canceling the trial. “All remaining trial dates are vacated.”
Smith, founder of Vista Equity Partners, was slated to testify against his former attorney in federal court.
Kepke was accused of helping Smith squirrel away $225 million in offshore entities and foreign bank accounts, out of sight of the IRS. Kepke was charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and helping to file a materially false tax return.
Kepke pleaded not guilty, while Smith signed a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department in which he came clean and agreed to pay $139 million in taxes and penalties.
Kepke’s lawyers filed court papers in October saying their client had an “extended history of heart disease and heart failure, having suffered two heart attacks and other heart-related medical procedures.”
One of those heart attacks had necessitated triple-bypass open-heart surgery, which brought attendant complications.
Kepke’s trial had been scheduled to start Monday.
“Carlos always maintained that he was innocent of these charges, and we were prepared to prove that at trial,” Richard Strassberg, one of Kepke’s attorneys, told Bloomberg Law.
It is the second time a defendant’s death has allowed Smith to dodge taking the stand in a criminal trial involving his business or business associates.
Former Smith associate Robert Brockman, 81, died in August before his own criminal trial, which would have been the biggest tax evasion case the U.S. had ever seen. The late CEO of software company Reynolds & Reynolds stood accused of attempting to conceal $2 billion over several decades.
