Google Earth Reveals Tax Evasion Scam

[HardOCP News]

Even the government (of Italy) is going high-tech when it comes to collecting taxes. This story involves a phallic shaped pool, taxes and Google Earth. Not necessarily in that order.

A detail regarding the villa was that it contained a swimming pool with a phallic shape. That unmistakable clue led the officers to search for the villa using satellite imagery on Google Earth, in order to collect further evidence.

 

[[H]ella|[H]ard]

Teehee, he said "phallic"

 

[Ockie]

Not really sure what the article or the collectors was getting to. They construed some story to be able to investigate.

 

[Exavior]

Not really sure what the article or the collectors was getting to. They construed some story to be able to investigate.

Best I can gather, some guy sold a house and said he sold it for 280,000 euros. They looked it up on Google Earth and decided that the house should have sold for more than that as it is in a expensive neighborhood and decided to check his records to see if he lied about how much he sold it for.

In doing so they found that he had been committing tax fraud for some time and owed over 7 million euros in taxes.

 

[jjager85]

Best I can gather, some guy sold a house and said he sold it for 280,000 euros. They looked it up on Google Earth and decided that the house should have sold for more than that as it is in a expensive neighborhood and decided to check his records to see if he lied about how much he sold it for.

In doing so they found that he had been committing tax fraud for some time and owed over 7 million euros in taxes.

ok..... so he should have sold it for more... but he sold it for less, and the gov. decided to investigate to see why he sold it so cheap? and found it was worth more just because he had a pool and had been paying less for years till now? i don't know about there, but where i live the county comes and does an appraisal on the property and if you have added a pool and they see it, your taxes will go up, but you can argue over them. this is BS, i mean it was the Gov. fault for not totally checking out the property every year.

 

[Ockie]

ok..... so he should have sold it for more... but he sold it for less, and the gov. decided to investigate to see why he sold it so cheap? and found it was worth more just because he had a pool and had been paying less for years till now? i don't know about there, but where i live the county comes and does an appraisal on the property and if you have added a pool and they see it, your taxes will go up, but you can argue over them. this is BS, i mean it was the Gov. fault for not totally checking out the property every year.

word. Not to mention, their attention was a pool that looked like a dick? Really? That looked like a normal pool to me.... looked like they were looking for an excuse to abuse power.


Secondly, I'm not sure what crime is committed when you sell your property for dirt cheap.... it's your property.

 

[TheGamerZ]

Secondly, I'm not sure what crime is committed when you sell your property for dirt cheap.... it's your property.

It was more to make sure they he wasn't lying about how much he sold it for. If he sells it for $500,000, but tells the govt he sold it for $250,000, he's cheating them out of half the taxes.

 

[Raudulfr]

and found it was worth more just because he had a pool and had been paying less for years till now?

/facepalm

Can you read? They FOUND the house he sold because they KNEW it had said pool.

A detail regarding the villa was that it contained a swimming pool with a phallic shape.

That unmistakable clue led the officers to search for the villa using satellite imagery on Google Earth, in order to collect further evidence

So I guess it's perfectly fine to sell a house for $1,000,000 and then declare it was only $200,000?

 

[Tekara]

It's unlikely that he sold it for that little and instead just reported the sale as being low to avoid paying the taxes on a million euro transaction. Even here in America, you don't start seeing built-in pools until you get into the higher dollar homes.

 

[darkpaw]

Secondly, I'm not sure what crime is committed when you sell your property for dirt cheap.... it's your property.

Sure it's your right to sell it for what you want, but it is good government to be on the lookout for fraud when someone is waving a giant red flag. If the sale was legitimate, there wouldn't have been any issues.