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CPA Draws Term in Drug, Sports Racket

. Luke Fairfield, former CPAA San Diego, Calif.-based CPA has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for his role in a network that trafficked drugs, employed bookies and enforcers and laundered money. Luke Fairfield, who lost his license when he pled guilty in March 2017, participated in a schemeled by former USC football player Owen Hanson and was the last of 22 defendants sentenced.

Hanson’s organization, ODOG operated in the United States, Central and South America, and Australia from 2012 to 2016. It sold a wide variety of drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine in wholesale and retail quantities. It also ran a “vast illegal gambling network focused on high-stakes wagers placed on sporting events."

When he pleaded guilty, Fairfield admitted he aided ODOG by laundering money, creating a shell company to hide the group’s proceeds, and training ODOG money runners how to hide the enterprise’s activities from law enforcement and banks. Fairfield admitted ODOG used at least 26 bank accounts to launder more than $8.3 million in gambling proceeds from January 2011 to October 2015

He once used an alias and fake identification when he personally transferred proceeds from Hanson’s Australian drug trafficking to the U.S. The accountant also worked with the ringleader to track debt collection from bookies and gamblers who owed ODOG hundreds of thousands of dollars from illegal bookmaking. 

Fairfield's firm, Fairfield Hughes CPAs, still bills itself as serving clients internationally. The firms website also notes "A major focus of our firm is providing service to military families and ex special forces working overseas on US Government contracts."

 

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
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