A Florida heiress has been sentenced to just two and a half years behind bars after conspiring to hide more than $90 million from the IRS for more than a decade.
Gilda Rosenberg, 60, of Golden Beach, pleaded guilty to orchestrating a massive fraud scheme along with her family, hiding millions in secret bank accounts across multiple countries including the UK and Switzerland to evade the US government.
On Friday she was handed a surprisingly light sentence of just 30 months in prison, according to the US Department of Justice.
While Rosenberg’s family had maintained offshore accounts since the 1970s, she became the official owner and authorized signer on several of these accounts by the late 1990s.
The dual US-Colombian citizen was aware that her family had failed to inform the US government about these foreign accounts.
By law they were required to pay taxes on any income earned from those assets – something they never did.
Then, in the 2000s, Rosenberg’s family moved their assets into accounts in the UK and Switzerland, openly informing the Swiss bank they were US residents intent on concealing their assets from authorities.
Their assets remained secure and undiscovered inside the Swiss account for more than a decade, until the bank eventually closed it in 2013 due to their status as US residents.
But the scheme didn’t stop there. After the Swiss account was closed, the family moved their assets across multiple countries, including Israel, Geneva and Andorra.
According to the DOJ Rosenberg was the official account holder for assets held in Geneva and Andorra, where she opened faulty accounts by falsely claiming to be solely a Colombian citizen and concealing her US citizenship.
During this period her family continued filing false tax returns that failed to report income generated by their international accounts.
As the scheme persisted Rosenberg continued to evade taxes – particularly by transferring assets between family members.
She signed documents to make it appear as though she and a relative were gifting hidden assets to another family member after he surrendered his US citizenship.
The scheme spanned 12 years, from 2010 to 2022, and involved unreported income exceeding $5.5million belonging to Rosenberg and two family members, resulting in a tax loss of $1,927,342.
In March she pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the IRS. Prior to her sentencing Rosenberg agreed to pay $1,927,342 to the IRS. Shealso agreed to pay interest on the restitution.
As part of her plea agreement Rosenberg was also ordered to pay $5,857,045 in civil penalties for failing to disclose her foreign bank accounts.
Rosenberg, whose family owns Miami-based Gilly Vending Inc, also pleaded guilty last year to a separate conspiracy charge tied to a scheme to defraud the US Army and Air Force Exchange Service in Texas.
According to the Miami Herald, Rosenberg filed false reports on vending machine sales of snacks and beverages in order to avoid paying the full amount due.
In 2019 a civil court judge ordered Rosenberg’s company to pay NBA star Alonzo Mourning approximately $590,000 after he sued over an unpaid 2015 deal that named him the face of the company’s healthy vending program, as reported by Local 10 News.
In a case brought by federal prosecutors in Texas last year Rosenberg admitted as part of a plea deal that she conspired to defraud the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the agency that operates vending machines on US Army, Air Force and Space Force bases worldwide.
Rosenberg is still awaiting sentencing in the Texas case, scheduled for Wednesday, though the sentence is expected to run concurrently with the prison term imposed by US District Judge Beth Bloom.