Different Circles

Meanwhile, a Los Angeles county superior court judge granted the California State Franchise Tax Board their requested subpoena for examination of payments made to one Matthew Norman Tisdale by their revenue distribution department for the past five years. Those documents were copied and released on June 3 and showed that National Records had paid Matthew Tisdale a grand total of $51,342,917 in royalties and touring income over the past five years, of which only $9,658,314 had been declared and properly taxed. That meant that Matt, if found not to primarily reside outside of the state of California, would owe 13.3 percent of that undeclared $41,684,603, which amounted to $5,418,998. And that was just the base amount he would owe. Penalties and interest would be tacked on as well, probably at least another half a million worth. And that was only the state of California. The federal tax rate on that $41.7 million would be close to forty percent, not including penalties and interest.

“This is a really bad situation, Matt,” Brimm advised the guitarist the night after the third and final show in Amsterdam. “I think you should start preparing yourself for the worst.”

“What’s the worst?” Matt asked.

“That you’re going to owe the state and the feds around thirty-two million dollars by the end of this year.”

“But I don’t fuckin’ have thirty-two million dollars!” Matt complained. “Most of that I already spent on my fuckin’ yacht and my house and the helicopter that goes with the yacht and the crew who fuckin’ drives the thing and keeps it up for me.”

“The state of California and the IRS do not care about that, Matt. They will get their money one way or the other.”

“Will they let me make payments?” he asked.

“They won’t just let you make payments, they will force you to,” Brimm told him. “It’s called garnishment of wages. They’ll get a judge to sign off on taking up to half of each royalty check that you receive.”

“That shit ain’t right!” he complained.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Brimm said. “The feds and the state don’t care about what’s right and what’s wrong. They just want their money, and they’ll do anything to get it.”

A hearing for the matter was scheduled for June 11 but had to be postponed because Hopple was still among the missing. The staff at the Hopple and Hopple offices were just as perplexed as everyone else about his disappearance. They claimed they had heard nothing from him, not a phone call, not a fax, not an email. He had failed to meet with multiple important clients and the junior accountants and partners in the firm were left leaderless. Police were sent to his house to make sure he hadn’t died but they found nothing there but his furniture. Both of his cars were still in the garage.

Finally, one of the franchise tax board auditors dug up Andrew Hopple I’s Florida phone number and gave him a call. The elder Hopple, now living the good life at a beachfront house just north of Miami, was quite surprised and alarmed to hear that his son was missing but was able to provide a small piece of information: His son had called him on the morning of June 1 to let him know that he would be taking a little vacation to South America.

“Did he say where in South America?” Hopple I was asked.

“Brazil,” was the answer. “Rio de Janeiro to be exact.”

“Did he say where he would be staying?”

“He did not. And I didn’t ask.”

“Very good, sir,” the auditor told him. “If you hear from him, please have him give me a call.”

“I will,” Hopple I said. “And if you hear from him, please let me know.”

The auditor promised to do so.

Three days later, on June 15, the California Franchise Tax Board obtained a legal order from a superior court judge to freeze all bank accounts belonging to Matthew Norman Tisdale in order to keep him from suddenly wiring all of his money overseas where they could not get to it. It was when the banks moved to enforce this order that they made yet another discovery.

Sixteen million dollars from Matt’s account had already been wired to a numbered bank account in Panama. That wire transfer had taken place the morning of June 1. It had been authorized by Matt’s primary accountant, one Andrew Hopple II. Further digging revealed that Hopple II had wired an additional twenty-one million dollars combined out of the accounts of sixteen other wealthy Hopple and Hopple clients on the same day. This brought the FBI into the case.

“Can I get my fuckin’ money back?” Matt asked the special agent in charge of the case when he was interviewed by phone from his hotel suite in Bremen, Germany.

“I’m afraid that is extremely unlikely, even if we do manage to get our hands on Mr. Hopple,” the agent told him. “We’ve traced the wire transactions to Panama, but the funds were immediately transferred from there to a series of accounts in the Grand Caymans and then to other accounts back in Panama again, though we cannot determine just where. God only knows where that money eventually ended up.”

“That’s a fuckin’ rip, dude,” Matt said.