Saratoga businessman convicted of tax fraud

A Saratoga man who ran an international trading business from his home has been convicted in federal court in San Jose of two counts of filing false income tax returns and one count of lying to a U.S. Internal Revenue Service auditor in 2010, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Jyh-Chau Horng, also known as Henry Horng, was found guilty of the three counts by a jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman on Monday after a four-week trial.

His wife, Meili Lin, also known as Ally Lin, faced two counts of filing false tax returns in the same trial. The jury acquitted her of one count and deadlocked on the other, causing a mistrial.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Simmons said trial evidence showed that Horng reported on the couple’s joint tax returns that their 2006 income was $232,116 and they suffered a loss of $212,217 in 2007.

But the evidence showed that during those two years, the couple bought millions of dollars of real estate, reported annual income of more than $1 million on numerous loan applications, invested $5 million in a Milpitas shopping center and made credit card purchases of more than $350,000, Simmons said.

A sentencing date has not been set.

Horng additionally faces two counts of making false statements to a federal insured institution and Lin faces one such count. Those counts were separated from the tax fraud counts and will be tried in a future trial.