Dan Rotta made his money as president of a New York City company that imported Seiko watches through the “gray market” and sold them at a discount in the United States. But he also made his fortune by hiding millions of dollars in assets in Switzerland and failing to pay millions of dollars in U.S. taxes on his earnings. Over 20 years, Rotta played a game of dodging taxes.
Between 1985 and 2020, Rotta hid more than $20 million in assets in dozens of secret Swiss bank accounts held in his own name, in the names of sham structures, and a pseudonym. Rotta employed increasingly elaborate schemes to keep his accounts hidden and tax free, such as leveraging his Brazilian citizenship against his U.S. citizenship and creating sham trust structures to transfer his assets to the United States without alerting the IRS. In 2017, Rotta presented false evidence to the IRS that the purported loans had been repaid. As a result, the IRS reversed the deficiencies and agreed that he owed no additional tax. However, the “loan repayments” presented by Rotta were fake. The funds that Rotta purportedly repaid went back into accounts that he controlled shortly after the IRS dismissed the suit.
In 2019, Rotta sought to avoid criminal charges by applying for the IRS voluntary disclosure program. Of course, Rotta made false statements in his submission, including falsely claiming that the assets in the Swiss accounts mostly belonged to others, and that any funds provided to him were non-taxable gifts.
A perennial tax dodger, Rotta earned tens of millions of dollars of income from these assets that he did not report on his tax returns. And he used those untaxed earnings on a lavish lifestyle.
On July 25, 2025, Rotta was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
Outstanding job by the Internal Revenue Service in this case.
Today’s Fraud of the Day is based on article “Miami man sentenced to five years for decades-long IRS fraud scheme” published by Caribbean National Weekly News on July 25, 2025.
A Miami resident has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for conspiring to defraud the United States by hiding more than $20 million in Swiss bank accounts and lying to the Internal Revenue Service during a years-long audit.
Dan Rotta, a dual U.S. and Brazilian citizen, was sentenced Wednesday to 60 months in prison for a scheme that spanned from 1985 to 2020. According to court documents and statements made in court, Rotta concealed assets in dozens of secret accounts across five Swiss banks—including UBS, Credit Suisse, Bank Bonhôte, and Bank Julius Baer—using his name, sham structures, and at least one pseudonym.
