Rodney King’s lawyer indicted for federal income tax evasion

Milton C. Grimes, the man who served as the lead attorney for Rodney King 30 years ago, has been indicted for attempting to evade payment of his individual income taxes and willful failure to pay taxes.

News reports said that Grimes had been paying close attention to the events that led to the death of George Floyd but he did not pay more than $1.7 million in taxes that he owed the IRS for tax years 2010 and 2014.

The IRS alleged that Grimes engaged in a scheme to thwart the IRS’ efforts to collect the unpaid taxes from him by, among other things, levying his bank accounts, by keeping his personal bank account empty.

Grimes, an attorney in Los Angeles, routinely purchased cashier’s checks and withdrew cash from his business bank accounts, often immediately after depositing funds to his business bank accounts, thereby avoiding funding his personal accounts.

During those years, Grimes allegedly withdrew approximately $16 million in funds from the accounts in cashier’s checks.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted the California attorney.

In addition, Grimes allegedly filed individual income tax returns for tax years 2018 through 2021 reporting that he owed approximately $700,000 in taxes. Grimes allegedly did not, and has not, paid the taxes that he self-reported he owes.

In total, Grimes is alleged to have caused a tax loss of approximately $2,418,050 to the IRS.

If convicted, Grimes faces up to five years in prison for the tax evasion count and up to one year in prison for each count of willful failure to pay taxes.

Grimes, a 78-year-old South Carolina native, studied law because he wanted to represent black people during the civil rights movement.

Grimes was responsible for winning a $3.8 million civil claim on behalf of King, the Black motorist who became the most infamous victim of police brutality in the history of America.

There was nothing new about what happened to King on March 3, 1991. Blacks in Southern California and throughout America had consistently suffered brutality and racism at the hands of police officers with regularity.

What changed everything in 1991 when those four LAPD officers were having their way with an unarmed defenseless Black man was a white amateur filmmaker George Holliday who recorded the event on his then cutting-edge Sony Handycam 8-millimeter video camera.

He later represented Chad Brian Scott, a heavily tattooed former white supremacist, who had been out on parole for just three weeks when he ran out of his psychiatric medication and someone called paramedics, who summoned sheriff’s deputies that tried to cuff him, struck him with a baton and used a tasered on him.

A police report said Scott stopped breathing and didn’t regain consciousness until he was at Antelope Valley Hospital but Grimes said his client was charged with felony resisting arrest. Bail, originally set at $1 million, was reduced to $250,000. Scott’s parole officer and the investigating sheriff’s detective in the case have both indicated they would not oppose dropping all charges against Scott, according to a memo by deputy district attorney Steve Ipsen, who was was taken off the case, and the D.A.’s office has decided to proceed with it.

The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, a cold blooded murder witnessed by the nation and world when Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin shoked the life out of an unarmed and defenseless Floyd while onlookers shouted at him to stop and caught the incident on video.

Grimes was accompanied by his 14-year old daughter for a protest march in Simi Valley, where City Council member Mike Judge, a 30-year police veteran, posted on Facebook in advance of the march “Wanna stop the riots? Mobilize the septic tank trucks, put a pressure cannon on em… hose em down…. the end.” 

After jurors in a Minneapolis court room convicted Chauvin of the murder on April 20 it galvanized a nation of advocates against police brutality and it also brought back candid memories of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada for the Central District of California made the announcement.

IRS Criminal Investigation is investigating the case.