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OGDEN — A former Ogden dentist has been convicted of evading taxes for over a decade and failing to pay around $1.8 million in federal taxes.
Derald Wilford Geddes was found guilty Thursday on all five federal charges against him — three counts of filing a false tax return, one count of impeding the Internal Revenue Service, and one count of tax evasion.
Geddes was indicted by a grand jury in 2015, accused of taking steps to avoid paying federal income taxes from at least 1998 to 2014. In total, he evaded over $1.8 million in taxes, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The initial indictment says Geddes used different businesses and made false statements to the IRS in an attempt to avoid paying taxes. Geddes submitted bogus documents entitled, "bond to discharge attachment for debt," in the hopes of resolving his outstanding tax bills and avoid having his property seized, the charging documents say. The "bond to discharge attachment for debt" is a type of bond that a debtor can purchase that would seek to prevent a creditor from seizing property.
The indictment says Geddes filed these sorts of bonds multiple times to avoid having his property seized, though these bonds were bogus. In 2007, he submitted a bogus bond to the IRS that he claimed satisfied his outstanding tax amounts from 1997-2005, the indictment says.
Geddes also reported in tax returns to the IRS, that from 2011-2013, his dental office, Mount Ogden Dental, had no gross receipts. The indictment says that Geddes knew this wasn't true, as the business had six-figure sums for the gross receipts in each of the three years. Those filings were the basis for the three counts of filing false tax returns.
Geddes will be sentenced on May 31. He is not being held in jail. He faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison for the tax evasion charge and three years in prison for each count of filing a false tax return.
An online search of the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing reveals that Geddes was a licensed dentist in Utah from 1989 to 2016. His licenses have since expired.
