A suspended lawyer who has lived in East Hartford admitted last week that he violated supervised release conditions in a federal tax evasion case, and a judge extended his supervision by a year, ordering him to spend three months of that time in home confinement.
After the lawyer, Donald J. McCarthy Jr., now in his early 70s, admitted the violation in US District Court in Bridgeport, Judge Stefan R. Underhill extended McCarthy’s supervision, ordered the home confinement, and required McCarthy to do 300 hours of community service work, online court records show.
The violations US Probation Officer Jesse Murray had alleged that McCarthy committed included failing to pay required restitution to the federal government and failing file tax returns for the years after his conviction. McCarthy also failed to give probation officer accurate and complete financial information or notify him of a change of address, according to the probation officer’s petition to the court.
Publicly available federal court records don’t show how much McCarthy has done to remedy the shortfall in his restitution payments for taxes he failed to pay before his December 2017 sentencing in the tax evasion case — or to pay taxes due since then.
The probation officer reported in a June 3 petition to the court that McCarthy’s outstanding restitution balance was more than $1.5 million.
The probation officer wrote that McCarthy was supposed to pay the greater of $500 per month or 10% of his gross monthly income in restitution. He said McCarthy’s average gross monthly income was between about $8,750 and $12,000, meaning that the 10% figure would be higher than $500. But he reported that McCarthy had never paid more than $500 per month and hadn’t made any payments since mid-February.
The probation officer also wrote that McCarthy had failed to file tax returns for 2019 through 2021 when he “earned significant taxable income,” according to the probation officer.
The form reporting the judge’s decision on the supervised release violation says nothing about what McCarthy is expected to do to remedy the missed restitution and tax payments. It says the judge adopted an agreement between the parties set forth in an Oct. 7 report by the probation officer, but that report is sealed from public view.
Attempts to reach McCarthy and his federal public defender, Josh B. Ewing, have been unsuccessful.
Nor has the US attorney’s office detailed the status of McCarthy’s financial compliance. The federal Right to Financial Privacy Act prohibits officials from providing payment histories of defendants.
Available court records show that several of McCarthy’s financial accounts have been garnished but fail to show the total amount of money in those accounts. One exception is that a court document filed by Empower Retirement shows that McCarthy had more than $42,900 in an individual retirement account.
The original sentence Underhill imposed on McCarthy for the tax evasion was two years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
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