Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his now ex-wife under-reported their taxable income from 2014 to 2019
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, serving a 22-year sentence for the murder of George Floyd, has pleaded guilty to tax fraud.
He admitted he was guilty of complicity in tax fraud on two occasions after he and his now ex-wife underreported taxable income between 2014 and 2019.
Chauvin was sentenced to 13 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution.
The May 2020 murder of Floyd, an unarmed black man, sparked massive protests across the United States.
Chauvin and his ex-wife, Kellie May Chauvin, were charged with tax crimes shortly after Floyd’s murder.
She pleaded guilty to the same charges last month and is expected to be sentenced to community service at a hearing in May.
The disgraced ex-officer entered his plea Friday during a virtual hearing from a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Chauvin held part-time security jobs separate from his work as a police officer, and passed on to tax officials no more than $95,000 (£78,000) in cash payments he received for the job.
Kelly Chauvin, who filed for divorce after the murder charges were announced, worked as a real estate agent and ran a photo business.
The charges relate to a period when they were married and filed tax returns together.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, officials began to suspect tax fraud after interviews with Chauvin’s father, an accountant who prepared his 2014-2015 taxes.
One day after detectives took tax documents from Chauvin’s home, Kellie Chauvin called his jailhouse husband to say that detectives were examining their tax returns.
Chauvin suggested seeking help from the person “we’ve been dealing with for years,” the paper reports.
She replied, “Yeah, well, we don’t want to get your dad involved because he’ll just be mad at me, I mean us because we haven’t done them for years.”
The investigation found that the Chauvins failed to report their entire income in 2014 and 2015 and did not file any taxes at all in 2016, 2017 or 2018.
The couple ultimately paid no more than $20,000 and were ordered to pay tax officials nearly $38,000 in restitution.
Friday’s verdict runs concurrently with the murder conviction, as does Chauvin’s subsequent 20-year sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights during the murder.