Howard Bloomberg, a forensic account and certified fraud examiner of Atlanta, Georgia, pleaded guilty on Friday to failing to file a Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR) for the year 2008. Mr. Bloomberg opened a bank account at UBS AG in July 1997. The value of Mr. Bloomberg’s account increased to approximately $930,000 in 2001, and he routinely wired funds from the UBS account to his U.S. accounts. He closed the UBS account in April 2008 and wired the balance of over $540,000 to the U.S.

For having admitted to not filing the 2008 FBAR, Mr. Bloomberg has agreed to pay a penalty of $278,397, representing 50% of highest balance in 2008, and file accurate FBARs from 1997 to 2008. At sentencing, currently scheduled for December, Mr. Bloomberg faces a maximum of five years’ imprisonment and 3 years’ supervised release. According to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Sally Quillian Yates:

The era of hiding money in secret Swiss bank accounts is over. Citizens should understand that failing to abide by their banking disclosure obligations to the U.S. Treasury Department could mean criminal prosecution.

(Press release here).

In addition, the trial of Raoul Weil is set to begin next Tuesday, October 14, in Florida. Mr. Weil is the former head of UBS’s global wealth-management business who was indicted in 2008 for allegedly supervising 60 private bankers who managed the secret assets of U.S. account holders. Mr. Weil appeared in court in 2013 and is currently living under house arrest in New Jersey.

For information on all prosecutions under the Department of Justice’s Offshore Compliance Initiative, which began in 2008 with its investigation of UBS, see its “scorecard” here.