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Florida man sentenced for evading taxes

A Florida man convicted of evading taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of stock in a much-scrutinized diamond company has been sentenced to four years in federal prison.

Marco Glisson, 59, a former auto worker who once lived in Las Vegas, was ordered into federal custody following his sentencing earlier this week to begin his prison term, Nevada U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden said Friday.

Glisson, who pleaded guilty in January to one count of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to sell and offer unregistered securities, was charged with hiding more than $664,000 in income from the IRS for the tax years 2006 and 2007. The money was from the sale of $1.8 million in unregistered stock in CMKM Diamonds, a Las Vegas-based company investigated by federal authorities on several fronts.

CMKM executives were among those indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2009 in a scheme to defraud investors out of $60 million in unregistered company stock. The case is set for trial in August, but may be delayed.

Glisson, once an assembly line worker at a General Motors plant in Wisconsin, was not charged in the CMKM fraud case. But he faced civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission and was accused of continuing to sell the company’s stock after the federal agency had de-registered it in 2005.

On the eve of his civil trial in Las Vegas in April 2012, Glisson struck a deal to pay the SEC $4.8 million to settle the case against him.

The deal called for Glisson, who did not admit or deny guilt, to pay $2.8 million in profits from trading the stock, $670,000 in interest and a $1.4 million civil penalty.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Find him on Twitter: @JGermanRJ.

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