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Billionaire Robert Brockman, who was charged in what is being called the largest tax evasion case against one person in U.S. history, has died at the age of 81, his lead attorney, Kathy Keneally, confirmed on Saturday (August 6), NBC News reports.
Additional details about Brockman's death, including the cause of death, weren't immediately made available on Saturday.
Brockman's attorney had argued in court that their client had dementia and was incompetent to stand trial, but a judge ruled otherwise in May and scheduled a trial date for February 2023.
Brockman, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes at $4.7 billion, was the former CEO of Reynolds & Reynolds, a Dayton, Ohio based company that provides business forms, management software and professional services to car dealerships.
The entrepreneur was charged with tax evasion of $2 billion in gains, wire fraud, money laundering and other offenses in a 39-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on October 15, 2020, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release issued at the time.
The Department of Justice accused Brockman of concealing billions from the IRS during a scheme that spanned multiple decades in what David L. Anderson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, referred to as "the largest ever tax charge against an individual" in the United States.
Keneally has previously worked as a long-time tax specialist and was the assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's tax division from 2012 to 2014 prior to serving as Brockman's lead attorney in the historic tax evasion case.