Judge postpones Corbin’s trial

A federal judge last Friday postponed Nassau County Legislator Roger Corbin’s tax evasion trial until Feb. 8. The trial, originally set to begin on Oct. 19, had been rescheduled to Nov. 30.

Trial date changes, U.S. District Court officials said, often occur in federal cases like this one.

Corbin, 62, is accused of evading taxes on $226,000 in income that he allegedly received from a developer involved in the Town of North Hempstead Community Development Agency’s $60 million New Cassel Revitalization Project, and for lying to federal officers.

According to a court affidavit, Corbin reported income of $575,873 on his federal tax returns from 2005 to 2007, when his income for those years was actually $801,873. Federal officers also claim that Corbin obstructed justice when he lied about the taxes during an interview with FBI and IRS agents at his Westbury home last November.

Corbin pleaded not guilty in federal court on June 9 to three counts of fraud and one count of lying to federal agents. But federal prosecutors also charged him with three additional counts of tax evasion on Nov. 13, just weeks after he submitted amended tax forms to the IRS and admitted that the $226,000 he received from the developer between 2005 and 2007 was income.

According to court documents, prosecutors also believe that Corbin’s attorneys, Thomas Liotti and Jennifer McCann, helped him prepare the tax returns, which prompted them to file the additional charges. The prosecutors also called for Liotti and McCann to be disqualified from the case.

Liotti said, however, that the returns were only mailed from his Garden City office, and they were prepared by Corbin’s accountant, Peter Goldman, for Corbin and his wife, Regina. “These charges fit under the category of no good deed goes unpunished,” Liotti said.

“The irony is amazing: When you try in good faith to comply with the law, they still penalize you and then want to throw our attorneys off the case,” added Regina Corbin. “What country are we in? I did not realize that the Long Island Rail Road has stops inside of the federal courthouse.”

Corbin pleaded not guilty to the additional charges in federal court on Nov. 16.

If convicted on all the charges, he faces up to 11 years in prison and could be ordered to pay more than $70,000 in back taxes, plus interest and other penalties, and nearly $1 million in fines, court officials said.

U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Feuerstein denied the government’s request that Liotti and McCann be removed as Corbin’s attorneys last Friday.

The latest developments add to the ongoing controversy surrounding Corbin’s legal woes. Liotti insists that the government’s treatment of his client is unfair, and contends that tax discrepancies similar to Corbin’s have been resolved civilly with the filing of amended tax returns.

Feuerstein, who has denied all of the Corbin legal team’s pre-trial motions since Corbin was arrested in May — which included a request from Liotti that the judge recuse herself from the case because of alleged bias — noted that the government has informed the court that it has no intention of resolving Corbin’s case civilly. But Liotti insisted that he would continue to push for a civil disposition. Last month he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the IRS informing both that Corbin and his wife had submitted amended tax returns.

Corbin, who represented the 2nd Legislative District since the Legislature’s inception in 1995, lost his re-election bid in September to Westbury resident Robert Troiano in a Democratic primary. Troiano also won the county’s general election on Nov. 3, and will be sworn-in as the 2nd District’s legislator in January.

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