Britney Spears In $14 Million Book Deal?

Britney Spears will somehow seduce a publisher into paying millions for three books from her; Lindsay Lohan wants to re-seduce Gotham via magazine spread and Dan Abrams keeps seducing actresses. More »

Can Wesley Snipes's Evil Genius Lawyers Help You Live the Tax-Evading Hollywood Dream?

We've heard of (and often tried) a lot of ways to ladder-climb in Hollywood, but "superstar tax-evasion defense attorney" is one we had pretty far down our list, just above "blogger." Still, that's not stopping Robert Bernhoft and Robert Barnes (or simply "the Bobs," as Portfolio refers to them in its November issue) from parlaying their momentum from last spring's Wesley Snipes trial into a kind of Malibu-based, Uncle Sam-swatting empire. "Wait," you ask, "didn't Wesley Snipes get three years in prison for misdemeanor tax evasion?" True, but these pinstriped paragons of justice have their own brazen, slightly lawyerly way of looking at it. More »

Some Anti-Drug PSAs Are Best Enjoyed Brain-Meltingly High

· In honor of Pineapple Express opening tomorrow, we thought we'd further promote mind-alteration with this trippy Hanna-Barbera anti-drug PSA, best enjoyed after a delicious bowl of psilocybin-and-MDMA cobbler. [Attack of the Show] More »

Alec Baldwin's Family Problems Not His Fault

Bloomberg Enjoys Bush Mockery

SnipesFlightWatch: Wesley Granted Bail

To add yet another unlikely wrinkle to the Wesley Snipes Totally Fucking Insane Tax-Avoidance Trial of the Century, artful Uncle Sam-dodger Wesley Snipes has convinced a judge (and, we suspect, unabashed Murder at 1600 fanatic) to release the actor on bail pending an appeal to his three-year sentence for accidentally forgetting in which shoe box he placed the IRS's $38 million check: More »

'The Chuck Norris Factor,' and Other Weaknesses in Wesley Snipes's Defense

The 24 hours since Wesley Snipes's three-year prison sentence for tax evasion have allowed for some perspective-gathering among the crack legal analysts at Defamer HQ. Sifting through the wreckage, we think we've discovered the key weak spots in the Snipes defense that, if only someone had acted sooner, could have kept our 18th (19th?) favorite action star a free man. Don't let this happen to you; follow the jump for a glimpse at the Chuck Norris factor and other Achilles' heels in Snipes's strategy. More »

BREAKING: Wesley Snipes Has Three Years In Prison to Prepare For Next Role

Word just over the transom at Defamer HQ notes that Wesley Snipes's tax-evasion hobby will cost him dearly — as in three years in federal prison. Not even character-boosting letters from Denzel Washington and Woody Harrelson were enough in the end to save Snipes from his fate, which was saluted today by US attorney Robert O'Neill: "[Y]ou have to pay your taxes. ... To continually just say, 'I don't owe taxes, you must show me why I owe taxes,' it seemed his position was ludicrous." More »

Embattled Wesley Snipes Likened To Unifying Tree By Loyal Friends Denzel And Woody

The Smoking Gun has uncovered yet another gem in Wesley Snipes's "Oops! I failed to pay $38 million to the IRS—but isn't that what the 861 Argument loophole is really there for? It isn't? Well, then, you're all racist!" Trial of the Century, reprinting two character reference letters recently penned by Denzel Washington and Woody Harrelson. (You may recall that Snipes was acquitted of federal tax-fraud and conspiracy charges, but was convicted of a lesser count of failing to file tax returns, punishable by a potential jail term of up to 3 years.) More »

Next Time, Nicolas Cage Will Try TurboTax

As if it's not enough for Nicolas Cage to have to deal with Kathleen Turner's chihuahua-napping accusations, now the actor is embroiled in a scandal with the Internal Revenue Service. Forbes.com is reporting that the Chiclet-toothed thespian used his production company to illegally write off $3.3 million in personal expenses, including "limos, meals, gifts, travel, and his Gulfstream 1159A turbojet." Sounds to us like someone had their taxes done by the shady accounting firm of Jackson, Hewitt & Snipes. More »

Wesley Snipes Called 'Coward' By Times Reporter After Spitting In IRS' Face

Movie star Wesley Snipes is certainly a stupid loathsome plutocrat after refusing to pay any taxes whatsoever on $58 million in earnings, a little scheme he devised after facing a measly $2 million tax bill . But the New York Times' dogged tax reporter David Cay Johnston has no business repeatedly calling Snipes a "coward" in the following video clip, taken outside the Florida courthouse where Snipes just evaded the worst criminal charges against him. Snipes brazenly stood up to the IRS, the most feared agency of the most feared government on the planet, and not only dodged taxes but also had the stones to ask for a $7 million refund, issue three hot checks for $14 million and Photoshop an IRS form to read "under no penalty of perjury." Johnston, who wrote the awesome book Perfectly Legal, should know better than to choose his words so poorly. More »

Wesley Snipes Proves He Can Still Dodge Bullets, Avoids Conviction For Tax Fraud And Conspiracy

The Wesley Snipes Totally Fucking Insane Tax-Avoidance Trial of the Century finally came to a close this afternoon in a Florida courtroom, where the Passenger 57 star and IRS Most Wanted Fading Action Hero was acquitted of federal tax-fraud and conspiracy charges, but was convicted of a lesser count of failing to file tax returns, a development that reduces his potential jail time from 16 to 3 years. His co-defendants, the renegade accountant and charismatic tax-protest-leader-cum-minister who will be portrayed by Paul Giamatti and Katt Williams (respectively) in the eventual, lightly fictionalized buddy-fugitive comedy based on this wild chapter of Snipes' life, were not so lucky, earning convictions on the aforementioned fraud and conspiracy charges. More »

Wesley Snipes: Taxes are Totally Unfair

We can't help but sympathize with actor Wesley Snipes when it comes to his tax trial crazytalk. I mean, I couldn't be bothered to file taxes for the last two years either, so I just didn't! Screw it, right? Wrong. The NYT calls Snipes' case ""the most prominent tax prosecution in nearly two decades." He is in so much trouble: his own lawyer is calling his anti-tax views "kooky." Excerpts from his manifesto to the IRS follow. More »

At today's court proceedings for The Wesley Snipes Totally Fucking Insane Tax-Avoidance Trial of the Century, the actor's lawyer conceded that while his client's statements about how he wound up in this unfortunate predicament might bear the faint whiff of batshit, the tensions between Snipes and the IRS are over honestly arrived-at "disagreements," not something uglier like "fraud." Reports the AP: "Defense attorney Robert Barnes conceded Snipes' arguments may have been crazy, but insisted that didn't make them criminal. 'Disagreement with the IRS is not fraud of the IRS, is not deception,' Barnes said. 'It was an attempt to engage the IRS, to go through the IRS procedures and processes and see who's right.'" [Yahoo! News]

Court Documents Reveal Wesley Snipes Would Be Killer At Pictionary

Wesley Snipes, the world's surliest vampire hunter, is about to go to trial on some SERIOUS tax evasion charges. Whoopsy daisy, seems that Blade forgot to declare and pay taxes on the $38 million that he made between 1999 and 2004 (we're thinking he made about $38 from 2005 until the present). But The Smoking Gun, being the document sleuths that they are, got their rubber-gloved hands on a document that Wesley filed with an Orange County (FLA, not CA) comptroller back in 2005. We used our computer's highly advanced Ctrl+Alt+Print Screen functionality to grab the image you see above, an image so confusing that it provokes more questions than it could ever possibly answer. First off, is that a hand-drawn self-portrait? It's like Van Gogh meets Rothko meets Rorshach! And second of all, that blood type! Does that mix with AB Negative? We must know. Lastly, that penmanship! We haven't seen so many swirls in a signature since Peggy Sue got married. But wait, there's more! More »

To Racist Feds: Thanks For Everything, Wesley Snipes

Hope continues to dwindle for Wesley Snipes, whose movie star currency has tumbled mightily since his 1990s action hero heights, and who now faces trial on his October indictment for six years' worth of tax evasion. (What—you've never cried "861 argument" to get out of paying the IRS?) Left with few options, the actor once again finds himself falling back on his trusty Passenger 57 roulette-playing advice: "Always bet on black." From The Smoking Gun: More »

Agent Fails To Tell Wesley Snipes That A Dramatic Standoff Could Be Good For His Flailing Career

We know that you want us to tell you that fugitive from tax-code-justice Wesley Snipes' arrest for the fraud charges filed against him back in October involved some kind of dramatic stand-off at the Orlando airport, with Snipes finally being dragged off the private jet that returned him to the States from Namibia after ten frantic hours of repelling wave after wave of IRS goons while armed only with eating utensils found in the plane's galley. Unfortunately, Snipes quietly turned himself in, made a brief court appearance in Ocala, Florida (sorry, he didn't wrestle a weapon from a momentarily distracted bailiff, admonish his captors for "not betting on black," then escaping in a stolen police car) and plans to immediately return to the African set of the low-budget zombie flick he's shooting while waiting for Hollywood to come to its senses and restore him to his mid-1990s stardom. Reality, as it so often is, is far less action-packed than the high-paying, shitty movies that got Snipes into this trouble in the first place. More »

Short Ends: Conan Mashes

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Short Ends: Snipes On The Run

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White Men Can't Jump, But They Can Write A Pretty Good Tax Evasion Indictment

The Smoking Gun reports that Wesley Snipes has been indicted for his involvement in a "bizarre tax avoidance scheme," in which he and two other men have been charged with trying to defraud the government of its fair share of the actor's mid-90s riches by claiming the obscure, oddly specific—and largely invalidated— "Section 57" tax code provision, which grants a massive refund to anyone who has ever mouthed the words, "Always bet on black!" without irony in a major Hollywood production. The Smoking Gun has the the details of the indictment, including the shocking revelation that Snipes somehow earned $19.2 million in 1997, a year in which his cinematic output was Murder at 1600 and One Night Stand (a fact that seems like an obvious red flag for possible fraud), as well as the document's dismissive description of Snipes as a defendant who "was a movie actor," an obviously intentional, unprofessional slight directed at his recent career. More »

Gossip Roundup: Malawian Baby-Free Edition