Derek Chauvin has admitted that he hid tens of thousands of dollars from the state.
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer serving a 22-year sentence for the murder of George Floyd, pleaded guilty to tax evasion in Minnesota on Friday. The man has admitted that he hid tens of thousands of dollars from the state.
Chauvin pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion in a Minnesota court before Washington County Judge Sheridan Hawley, according to an NBC report. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison, according to a spokesman for the county prosecutor’s office.
The May 2020 killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, led to massive protests across the United States. The murder was captured on video and sparked civil rights protests across the United States.
Shortly after Floyd’s death, Chauvin and his ex-wife, Kelly Mae Chauvin, were charged with tax crimes. He pleaded guilty to the same charges last month and is expected to be sentenced to community service at a hearing in May, the BBC reports. The former Minneapolis police officer entered his plea on Friday in a virtual hearing from a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
He failed to pay taxes on $464,433 of combined income from 2014 to 2019, which included $95,000 he earned working as an off-duty security officer.
Kelly Chauvin who worked as a real estate agent and operated a photography business filed for divorce after the murder charges were announced.
Officials told NBC that together they owed the state $37,868, which included unpaid taxes, interest and fees.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, authorities began to suspect tax fraud after interviews with Chauvin’s father, an accountant who prepared his 2014-15 taxes.
Chauvin suggested they seek help from someone “whom we’ve been dealing with for many years”, the newspaper reports.
Chauvin, who is white, pleaded guilty in December 2021 to violating the civil rights of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was arrested in May 2020 for using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy a pack of cigarettes. It was
Chauvin is already serving a 22-and-a-half-year sentence after pleading guilty to state murder charges for Floyd’s death, which sparked protests against racial injustice and police brutality across the United States.
Chauvin also pleaded guilty in a separate case to violating the constitutional rights of a 14-year-old boy.
In that 2017 incident, Chauvin wrestled the handcuffed boy to the ground and struck him several times over the head with a flashlight.
