Private: $456 Million Fine, Eight Indictments in KPMG Tax Shelter Case

The accounting firm KPMG has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay the federal government $456 million to avoid criminal prosecution for creating fraudulent tax shelters for clients, according to the New York Times. Eight former executives from the firm have also been indicted for their roles in creating the shelters and could face an uphill battle in defending themselves because of the company's admission of guilt.
The tax shelters at issue in the case "were part of a new breed of shelters devised by accounting firms in the late 1990's to help wealthy individuals evade billions of dollars in taxes. In 2003, a Senate subcommittee report on four KPMG shelters found that people who bought the shelters avoided at least $1.4 billion in taxes from 1996 to 2002," the Times reported.
The White Collar Crime Prof Blog has comments on the KPMG case here and here, and a not-particularly-revealing statement from KPMG about the case (KPMG "is pleased to have reached a resolution with the Department of Justice. We regret the past tax practices that were the subject of this investigation.") can be found here.