A UBS Customer Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion

The former lawyer, Kenneth Heller, banked the money with UBS and then moved it to a smaller private Swiss bank, Wegelin, in June 2008 after reading that UBS might identify account holders, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Heller is the sixth person to plead guilty to criminal charges of tax evasion out of seven charged in April 2010. He faces a possible maximum prison term of 15 years after his guilty plea before Judge P. Kevin Castel of United States District Court in Manhattan. Sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 27.

In February 2009, UBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the United States, admitting it had helped taxpayers hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service.

As part of the agreement, UBS provided the government with names and account information for a number of United States-based account holders whom bank employees had helped to hide their money to avoid paying taxes.

The indictment against Mr. Heller said he had opened a UBS account in the name of a sham offshore company in December 2005. The next month, he wired $26.4 million from the United States to the account and his name did not appear as the account holder on UBS documents.

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