Robert Moran, of Lighthouse Point, Fla., pleaded guilty Tuesday to a criminal information charging him with filing a false income tax return, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced. Moran appeared Tuesday before Judge James I. Cohn in Ft. Lauderdale and accepted responsibility for concealing more than $3 million in assets in a secret bank account at UBS in Switzerland.

According to court records, on or about Oct. 14, 2008, Moran, a Ft. Lauderdale yacht broker, filed a U.S. Individual Income Tax Return Form 1040 for tax year 2007, which he signed under the penalties of perjury. The tax return failed to report that Moran had an interest in, or signature authority over, a financial account at UBS in Switzerland. Additionally, Moran failed to report the income he earned on any UBS Swiss bank accounts.

In February 2009, UBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in which the bank admitted to helping U.S. taxpayers hide accounts from the IRS. As part of their agreement, UBS agreed to provide the U.S. government with the identities of, and account information for, certain United States customers of UBS’s cross-border business.

According to court records, Moran was the beneficial owner of a UBS account in the name of Winter Drive Investments S.A., a nominee Panamanian corporation. From 2001 through 2008, Moran communicated with bankers at UBS via email, telephone and in person about the purchase and sale of securities, and the conversion of investments from U.S. dollars to Euros.

Judge Cohn scheduled sentencing for June 26, 2009. Moran faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

On April 2, 2009, another UBS client, Steven Michael Rubinstein, was charged with filing a false income tax return via a criminal complaint. Rubinstein, of Boca Raton, Florida, is alleged to have failed to report income and assets in a secret Swiss bank account.

“Just two weeks ago, the Southern District of Florida and the Tax Division charged the first UBS client with filing a false tax return. This week, we charge yet another,” said R. Alexander Acosta, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. “We will continue to prosecute those who use offshore schemes to avoid paying their taxes. If you are hiding income abroad, I suggest you approach us.”

“Combating offshore tax evasion continues to be one of the IRS’s top priorities,” said IRS Deputy Commissioner Linda Stiff. “With each passing day, it is increasingly clear the IRS is committed to pursuing people hiding income offshore. Anyone in this situation needs to immediately come in through our voluntary disclosure process before it’s too late. It’s better to come clean now instead of waiting and facing a heavier price later.

U.S. citizens who have an interest in, or signature or other authority over, a financial account in a foreign country with assets in excess of $10,000 are required to disclose the existence of such account on Schedule B, Part III of their individual income tax return, the Justice Department said.

Under its deferred prosecution agreement, UBS agreed to expeditiously exit the business of providing banking services to United States clients with undeclared accounts and pay $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution. In light of the UBS’s willingness to acknowledge responsibility for its actions and omissions, its cooperation and remedial actions to date, and its promised continuing cooperation and remedial actions, the government will recommend dismissal of the charge, provided the bank fully carries out its obligations under the agreement, Justice Department officials said.

“UBS executives knew that UBS’s cross-border business violated the law,” said R. Alexander Acosta, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. “They refused to stop this activity, however, and in fact instructed their bankers to grow the business. The reason was money — the business was too profitable to give up. This was not a mere compliance oversight, but rather a knowing crime motivated by greed and disrespect of the law.”

A criminal information unsealed in February charged UBS with conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding the IRS. According to court documents, in 2000, after it purchased the brokerage firm Paine Webber, UBS voluntarily entered into an agreement with the IRS that required UBS to report to the IRS income and other identifying information for its United States clients who held United States securities in a UBS account.

Court documents allege that the agreement also required UBS to withhold income taxes from United States clients who directed investment activities in foreign securities from the United States. The information further asserts that, in order to evade those new reporting requirements, employees and managers within the cross-border business, with the knowledge of certain UBS executives, helped United States taxpayers open new UBS accounts in the names of nominees and/or sham entities.

According to court documents, the assets of the individual’s accounts were then transferred to the newly created accounts, as to which the U.S. taxpayer would not be identified as a beneficiary.

The criminal information asserts that this device was used by UBS to justify evading its reporting obligations and helped United States taxpayers to continue to conceal their identities and assets from the IRS.

The criminal information also alleges that Swiss bankers routinely traveled to the United States to market Swiss bank secrecy to United States clients interested in attempting to evade United States income taxes. Court documents assert that, in 2004 alone, Swiss bankers allegedly traveled to the United States approximately 3,800 times to discuss their clients’ Swiss bank accounts.

The information further alleges that UBS managers and employees used encrypted laptops and other counter-surveillance techniques to help prevent the detection of their marketing efforts and the identities and offshore assets of their U.S. clients. According to the information, clients of the cross-border business in turn filed false tax returns which omitted the income earned on their Swiss bank accounts and failed to disclose the existence of those accounts to the IRS.

In November 2008, UBS executive Raoul Weil was indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale and charged with conspiring to defraud the United States for his alleged role in overseeing the United States cross-border business. The district court recently declared him to be a fugitive.

Between 2002 and 2007, Weil oversaw the Swiss bank’s cross-border private banking business that provided services to 20,000 U.S. clients who “concealed their identities and the existence of their Swiss bank accounts from the IRS,” according to the indictment unsealed last year.

About 17,000 “of these clients willfully failed to pay tax to the IRS on income earned on their Swiss bank accounts,” the indictment says. UBS “assisted these United States clients [to] conceal the income earned on Swiss bank accounts…”

In June 2008, former UBS private banker Bradley Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to defraud the United States for similar conduct. Birkenfeld is scheduled to be sentenced on May 1, 2009. Also, in June 2008, the U.S. District Court in Miami authorized the Internal Revenue Service to serve upon UBS a so-called “John Doe” summons seeking records that would identify United States taxpayers with accounts at UBS in Switzerland who have elected to conceal the existence of their accounts from the IRS.

According to the government’s indictment, Weil, who turned 49 on the same day he was indicted, referred to the bank’s cross-border private banking business as “toxic waste” “because [Weil and the unindicted co-conspirators] knew that it was not being conducted in a manner that complied with United States law.”

Weil allegedly demanded that the company’s bankers increase the size of its cross-border business, despite the fact that doing so was a federal crime.

The DOJ said Weil was given a choice: sell or spin off the cross border business. Instead, the government alleged he chose to continue the business because it was highly profitable, generating upwards of $200 million in annual revenue for UBS.

“Weil and other executives would not implement effective restrictions on United States cross-border business because the business was too profitable,” the indictment said.

The government’s five-year federal investigation uncovered evidence of UBS bankers who routinely traveled to the United States to market Swiss bank secrecy to U.S. clients interested in attempting to evade federal income taxes, the indictment said.

In 2004 alone, about 32 UBS bankers, who ultimately reported to Weil, traveled to the United States approximately 3,800 times to discuss their clients’ Swiss bank accounts. Clients of the cross-border business filed false tax returns that omitted the income earned on their Swiss bank accounts and failed to disclose the existence of those bank accounts to the IRS.

Furthermore, in 2002, according to the indictment, Weil “and other executives” authorized managers in the cross-border division to “institute a temporary five month travel ban to the United States.”

“The ban coincided with an IRS initiative relating to identifying holders of offshore credit cards,” the indictment states.

“On or about January 22, 2003, after being advised by outside lawyers to take immediate action in order to build a defense against a possible future criminal case brought against [UBS] Manager #2 instructed Manager #3 to limit written communications relating to offshore structures created for United States clients and instructed Manager #3 to begin issuing Form 1099 information to clients, but not the IRS, for certain Swiss bank accounts where [UBS] Bank Officials served as a manager for the offshore structures,” the indictment said.

Two days later, on Jan. 24, 2003, two managers in UBS’s cross-border division sent a form letter to clients with holdings in Swiss bank accounts reminding them that since 1939 UBS has successfully concealed the identity of its account holders from law U.S. Authorities.

UBS lost billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage meltdown and is the subject of a federal investigation. The company, which received a $5.3 billion bailout from the Swiss government, wrote down $37 billion in losses during the first two quarters of the 2008. Republican Sen. John McCain hired former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was employed by UBS as a lobbyist, to advise him on economic issues during last McCain’s failed bid for the White House last year.