Former commercial airline pilot sentenced to over three years in prison for tax evasion

Date: Sept. 26, 2024

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MINNEAPOLIS - A former commercial airline pilot has been sentenced to 41 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release for filing false tax returns, failing to file tax returns, and making false claims, announced U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Charles Randall Sorensen, of Minnetonka, was a commercial airline pilot who retired in 2016. In January 2017, Sorensen filed a fraudulent tax return for the 2015 tax year, falsely claiming that he was entitled to a $55,365 tax refund. In reality, Sorensen owed more than $49,000 in income taxes that year. In March 2017, Sorensen filed a fraudulent tax return for the 2016 tax year, falsely claiming that he was entitled to a $123,370 tax refund. In reality, he owed more than $175,000 in taxes that year. The IRS conducted an audit of Sorensen's 2015 and 2016 tax returns and found that Sorensen fraudulently received more than $150,000 in tax refunds to which he was not entitled and owed more than $290,000 in taxes, interest, and penalties for those tax years.

According to the evidence presented at trial, Sorensen refused to pay his tax debt and took steps to actively evade the IRS's collection efforts by hiding his income and assets in bank accounts in the name of shell religious non-profits and by liquidating his retirement accounts and converting the funds into cryptocurrency. Sorensen also failed to file federal income tax returns for 2017, 2018, and 2019. It is estimated that Sorensen owes the United States more than $300,000.

On May 31, 2024, Sorensen was found guilty by a federal jury on two counts of filing a false tax return, one count of tax evasion, three counts of failing to file a tax return, and one count of making a false claim. He was sentenced today by Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael P. McBride and Campbell Warner prosecuted the case.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.