Big Names Who Have Been Burned : Celebrity Victims : The rich and famous often lose out in tax scams. But prosecutors say they may not deserve much sympathy.

“Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry,” Dick Cavett said in 1985. “They assume the people who handle it know what they are doing.”

Cavett was explaining how he had put money in a phony investment scheme that was designed to shelter his income with tax losses. He might have been speaking for people in a lot of other businesses as well.

Some of the brightest lights of Hollywood and the sports and business worlds have been caught up in phony tax schemes that have come to light in recent years. Among the luminaries are actors Bill Cosby and the late Lorne Greene, CBS boss Laurence A. Tisch, producer Norman Lear, writer Erica Jong and ex-pitcher Don Drysdale.

On Wednesday, prosecutors in New York added some new names: Billionaire businessman John W. Kluge and the late fashion designer Perry Ellis, who prosecutors said were investors in an allegedly fraudulent tax scheme run by Jon Edelman of Rye, N.Y., and Bernhard F. Manko of Lighthouse Point, Fla. The pair were charged in a 32-count indictment.

Celebrity victims in other cases have included the late pop artist Andy Warhol, actors Michael Landon, Bill Murray and Sidney Poitier, and Woody Allen and his collaborator Marshall Brickman. The canny businessmen who have been stung in such schemes include former U.S. Postmaster General Preston Tisch and Michel David-Weill, head of the Lazard Freres & Co. investment bank.

The sports notables who have seen their writeoffs disallowed includes San Francisco Giants pitcher Atlee Hammacher and Oakland Athletics second baseman Glenn Hubbard.

Such luminaries tend to fall victim for some fairly obvious reasons: They have the money to invest, huge incomes to shelter from taxes and a desire to have somebody else handle their tax problems for them.

Tax Rules Tightened

“They pass their problems over to the tax attorney or accountant, and he picks the investment for them,” said Stuart E. Abrams, a New York lawyer who as a federal prosecutor pursued tax swindler Charles Atkins in such a case.

Sometimes, in their eagerness to impress their clients by sharply reducing their tax bills, these tax advisers have led their clients to schemes that promised huge writeoffs. In the late 1970s and through much of this decade, investors could gain such huge writeoffs as limited partners in deals that invested in oil or gas, real estate, government securities or even horse breeding.

Though tax rules have since been tightened, these schemes often promised to shelter $4 of income for every dollar invested. Sometimes they sheltered as much as $10 for every dollar invested.

In recent years, many celebrity victims turned up in cases that, like the Edelman and Manko case, involved allegedly phony investments in government securities trading.

The investors in such cases were customarily told that their money would be used to trade in the highly risky government securities market. They were told that if the trading made money, they would share in the profits; if it lost money, they would reap the tax-loss benefits.

In fact, prosecutors allege, the operators of such investment plans have no intention to make money but simply plan to rack up big losses, which they can pass back to investors. Among the cases like this are those Charles A. Atkins, “the boy wonder of tax shelters”; Washingtonian Edward A. Markowitz, and the Sentinel Government Securities case.

The celebrities whose names have appeared in connection with these cases have often had the same tax adviser.

In the Markowitz case, for example, Allen, his manager Jack Rollins, collaborator Brickman and others became investors because they were using the same accounting firm, the now defunct Bernstein & Freeman of New York.

Charles Carberry, the former federal prosecutor who led the government’s efforts in the Atkins, Sentinel and Markowitz cases, said such investments often seem legitimate to outsiders because it appears that reputable lawyers and accounting firms have given them their blessings. The crooked firms show their books and operations to reputable lawyers and accountants, telling them they fully intend to try to make money in securities trading.

“But they have no intention to--and they’ve prearranged trades to ensure they won’t make money,” Carberry said. In the Atkins case, for example, Atkins’ concern had “opinion letters” from the Big Eight accounting firm of Arthur Young & Co. and from the reputable Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter.

The celebrities who fall victim in such cases, like other investors, often end up owing huge sums in back taxes and interest but are not charged with any crime.

Still, the publicity about their involvement seems to cause the celebrities great grief. In early 1987, after actor Landon was identified as an investor in the Atkins scheme, he called a press conference to denounce then-U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York for releasing investors’ names.

Landon accused Giuliani of “climbing the political ladder on the backs of innocent American citizens.”

But some prosecutors contend that taxpayers should suspect the legality of any scheme that promises them $4 or $10 in writeoffs for every dollar of their investment.

When he announced the Atkins indictment in 1987, Giuliani was asked about the innocence of Atkins’ investors. He said he wouldn’t comment on the ethics of what they had done, but added: “I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep sympathizing with their problems.”

Paul Richter reported from New York and George White from Los Angeles.