A wealthy South Florida businessman was arrested over the weekend on charges that he defrauded the U.S. government by hiding millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and lying to the IRS about his foreign assets for decades, according to federal authorities.

Dan Rotta, who owned a home on exclusive Fisher Island, is accused of hiding more than $20 million in assets in 24 secret accounts at five Swiss banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse, and failing to report substantial income from these holdings on his tax returns, according to a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors.

Rotta had his first federal court appearance Monday on conspiracy and false-statement charges, and he has a detention hearing in Miami on Tuesday. A lawyer who represented Rotta in a former civil tax dispute with the IRS, which underscores the new criminal case, could not be reached for comment.

Set up Swiss accounts with Brazilian cousin: Feds

Rotta, 76, made his money as president of a New York City company that imported Seiko watches through the “gray market” and sold them at a discount in the United States. Prosecutors with the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office depicted Rotta as a longtime tax dodger in the criminal complaint filed with his arrest on Saturday.

In 2008, after UBS and its bankers came under criminal investigation for helping U.S. taxpayers evade paying their taxes, Rotta took steps to hide his holdings by shutting down his account with that bank and moving his funds to Credit Suisse and other Swiss banks, including putting the accounts in the names of other people, according to the complaint.

Three years later, the IRS began auditing Rotta after obtaining evidence of unreported foreign financial accounts. At the time, Rotta falsely denied holding such accounts, but IRS investigators uncovered evidence showing Rotta received transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars from these foreign accounts that he did not report on his tax returns, prosecutors said, citing the criminal complaint.

Rotta is accused of claiming the transfers were non-taxable loans from third parties, and that a representative of the businessman provided the IRS with “sham loan documents to corroborate his claims,” prosecutors said. To back up his claim, Rotta enlisted his friend and cousin, a Brazilian native listed as a “co-conspirator,” to inform the IRS that he either made or facilitated the loans.

IRS investigators did not believe Rotta and assessed additional taxes as well as penalties and interest against him, prosecutors said. But then in U.S. Tax Court, Rotta filed a petition that “falsely denied having any foreign accounts and attached the fictitious loan documents,” according to a Justice Department news release summarizing the criminal complaint.

In addition, Rotta’s cousin traveled to the United States and retold the false loan story to IRS attorneys, prosecutors said. In 2017, after Rotta offered evidence showing that the purported loans had been repaid, the IRS reversed its earlier decision and agreed that Rotta owed no additional tax. Unbeknownst to the IRS, however, the funds that Rotta purportedly repaid to the third parties went into accounts under his control, prosecutors said,

Aware that the IRS would receive copies of his Swiss bank records, Rotta tried to participate in the IRS’s voluntary disclosure practice two years later. Taxpayers who willfully do not comply with their tax and reporting obligations can make complete disclosures of their conduct as a possible way to resolve their dispute and limit their potential criminal liability, prosecutors said. In his submission, which was signed under penalties of perjury, Rotta made several false statements, prosecutors allege in the criminal complaint.

Not his first run-in with the law

Rotta, if convicted, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for a conspiracy charge and another five years for making a false statement charge.

Rotta’s long-running tax dispute is not his first brush with the law.

In 2013, Rotta was found guilty of contempt of court for marrying off his teenage son. That July, a Miami-Dade circuit judge sentenced Rotta to 180 days in jail for allowing his 16-year-old son to get hitched in Las Vegas to his housekeeper’s daughter.

The court had ordered Rotta, then 66, to take his troubled son to a Utah boarding school. Instead, Rotta took his son to Las Vegas for the shotgun wedding, which “emancipated” the teen from the judge’s oversight.

The drama was part of long-running legal disputes stemming from divorce proceedings between Rotta and ex-wife Renee Rotta of Aventura.

Rotta only served nine days in jail before posting a $10,000 bond during his appeal.