Frontiere Pleads Guilty to Tax Charges

Dominic Frontiere, the husband of the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles to criminal charges that he willfully filed a false income tax return and lied to Internal Revenue Service investigators to cover up his role in scalping Rams tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl game.

Frontiere’s admissions of guilt were narrow, however, just enough to meet the legal criteria that he willfully misled the government. They did not shed any additional light on what happened in the ticket-scalping affair, which government agencies have investigated for at least three years.

U.S. District Judge William D. Keller said he was disturbed by the sketchiness of the admissions, but questioned Frontiere only briefly in an attempt to elicit more information.

Keller will sentence the 55-year-old Hollywood composer on Dec. 8. Frontiere faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Frontiere was charged in June in an indictment that alleged that:

- He and his wife, Georgia, who was not charged, reported income of $397,000 in 1980 on their joint return, when Dominic Frontiere knew they should have reported substantially more income from the tickets he sold.

- He and his wife claimed a false deduction of $116,335 for tickets that they said they gave away, when Dominic Frontiere knew the tickets had been sold.

- He lied to IRS investigators when he told them that he had personally received only about 200 tickets and had given most of them to friends, when the truth was that he had received thousands of tickets, sold most of them at prices far above their face value through Raymond Cohen, a convicted thief, and netted hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In a written submission to Keller as part of a plea bargain, Frontiere admitted only that he knew that the $116,335 deduction for complimentary tickets should have been substantially less, and that he had lied to agents when he denied he knew Cohen.

“I am a little troubled by the completeness of it,” Keller said, referring to the admissions. “Tell me in your own words, what is it that you did?”

Frontiere explained that his accountant had told him he was “writing off” approximately 3,000 complimentary tickets and asked him if that would be accurate and “I said yes.”

In an apparent reference to how much money he made from the ticket sales, Frontiere said that “the difference” was perhaps $10,000 or $20,000, and said he had believed that reporting the additional income would have made no difference in the taxes he owed.

“My state of mind was simply that I didn’t owe the government any money . . . because I had this huge write-off (for a $700,000 one-time operating loss from the Rams),” he said.

Prosecutors have conceded that he would have owed no more taxes, but have contended that is irrelevant to the crime of lying on a return.

“Have you been involved with Raymond Cohen in selling certain of these tickets?” Keller asked.

“Yes,” Frontiere said. “I felt I was being threatened at the time. That’s why I lied.”

That was an apparent reference to an allegation that Frontiere has made previously through his attorney, claiming that Cohen and a reputed organized crime figure extorted most of the ticket sale money from him.

Questions Remain

Many questions remain in the aftermath of the pleas, including how Dominic Frontiere, who holds no position with the Rams, managed to obtain so many Super Bowl tickets and the reasoning behind the Justice Department’s decision to seek an indictment against him, but not his wife, although they filed a joint return.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner began a press conference after the guilty pleas by saying “We’re not going to comment on underlying facts.” Asked why, he explained, “Because I’ve decided we’re not going to comment on underlying facts.”

Prosecutors have said they “may make a full statement of (their) version of the facts” to Keller and to the probation office, but will make no sentencing recommendation. Bonner said he was not certain whether the statement would be made public.