[1] Since then, he has grown the firm and now owns more than 6.4 million square feet of office space and nearly 12,000 residential units in Las Vegas, Arizona, California, and Florida.
Olenicoff denied he owned Sovereign, claiming that it was a Russian parastatal investment vehicle established by Boris Yeltsin, and that it had merely lent money to Olen.
[1] It was later revealed that Olenicoff was listed on signature cards held by Barclays Bank (Bahamas) as chairman of Sovereign Bancorp and as the president of the National Depository Corporation, Ltd.
[3] In 2022, Olenicoff sued Newport Beach to block a competing real estate developer from building an apartment complex near John Wayne Airport.
[4] Olenicoff was ensnared in the UBS scandal, in which the Swiss private bank was revealed to have helped American citizens evade billions of dollars in taxes owed to the U.S. government.
As part of his plea bargain, Olenicoff paid a $52 million fine and agreed to repatriate his offshore funds to the United States.
[6] In his sentencing on April 14, 2008, Olenicoff blamed his situation on bad financial advice from accountants, bankers, and lawyers and his own thoughtlessness, claiming it was never his intent to defraud the government.
While the prosecutor admitted that Olenicoff had cooperated with the government as per the terms of his plea bargain, he had illegally used off-shore banks to avoid taxes since at least 1992.
"[8] Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Sagel argued that a shorter probation period would enable the billionaire to speedily repatriate his assets, which currently were out reach of the IRS.
[9] U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney sentenced Olenicoff to two years on probation and 120 hours of community service.
Olenicoff alleged that UBS and Birkenfeld had engaged in fraud and conspiracy by giving him bad advice, i.e., that he could avoid paying U.S. taxes by moving his assets to the Swiss bank.
In his written opinion, Judge Guilford said that Olenicoff since he already pleaded guilty to tax evasion, "It is directly inconsistent for him now to claim that he unwittingly relied on UBS's counsel.
"[13] In June 2014, Olenicoff and his real estate company, Olen Properties Corp., were found guilty of copyright infringement by a federal jury and ordered to pay $450,000 in damages to sculptor Don Wakefield, who creates abstract stone sculptures.
In 2008, Wakefield found a similar sculpture at the Newport Beach, California offices of Olen Properties that he initially thought was the original of his "Untitled" work.
[16] Olenicoff also is being sued by sculptor John Raimondi, who was contacted by the real estate tycoon to create versions of two of his extant sculptures as part of a percent-for-art mandate.
On January 14, 2014, District Court Judge Charles P. Kocoras sentenced Warner to two years probation and 500 hours of community service.
Olenicoff, who also got two years probation and community service, pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return, a felony.