Michael Cohen has filed a $500,000 negligence lawsuit against his accountant for allegedly making errors on three years of tax returns.
Cohen — who is currently serving out a three-year prison sentence — sued accounting firm Getzel Schiff & Pesce, LLP and accountant Jeffrey Getzel in Manhattan Supreme Court Friday for “negligence in preparing Mr. Cohen’s tax returns for the tax years 2013 through 2016.”
Cohen — President Donald Trump’s former “fixer” — claims that the firm failed, “to account for certain taxi medallion income, estimated tax payments, and loan repayments.”
The 53-year-old lawyer — who pleaded guilty to tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress — is $22 million in debt after allegedly taking loans against the taxi medallions he owned.
It’s not clear if the claims Cohen is making in the new civil suit are related to the criminal tax charges.
Manhattan federal prosecutors and the FBI began looking into the taxi medallions in 2017, finding alleged misrepresentations and omissions intended to get Cohen out of paying the massive debt.
He allegedly didn’t disclose tens of thousands of dollars of income he got through consulting work in order to avoid paying back the loans, documents revealed.
“By making these misrepresentations and material omissions, Cohen avoided making monthly payments on his loans, and attempted to fraudulently induce the banks to relieve him of certain repayment obligations and personal guarantees that Cohen and his wife had signed,” papers unsealed in March 2019 alleged.