The Nation - News from March 13, 1988

Three people convicted of operating a $350-million tax shelter conspiracy for celebrity investors received sentences in federal court ranging from two years in prison to five years of probation. Among those victimized were actors Sidney Poitier, Michael Landon, the late Lorne Greene, television producer Norman Lear and CBS Corp. Chairman Laurence Tisch, according to the U.S. attorneys’ office in New York. Once the scheme was revealed, most of the celebrities filed amended tax returns and paid the difference. U.S District Judge Morris Lasker sentenced Charles Atkins, 32, of Amelia Island Plantation, Fla., to two years in prison and four years’ probation; William Hack, 62, of New York, to a four-month prison sentence and four years and eight months on probation, and Ernest Grunebaum, 52, of Chappaqua, N.Y., to five years’ probation. The partners promoted themselves as broker-dealers who invested in money market instruments, offering substantial tax benefits