Sandy Weiner, J.D.

California Editor

Tax season has officially begun, and with it those 60-plus-hours long workweeks. Soon it will be hard to remember what you used to do with all your time and even harder to imagine ever having free time again.

If you need inspiration, look no further than David Rush, the ultimate overachiever, who in 2021 managed to break 52 Guinness World Records in 52 weeks.

Just a few of the many feats he performed:

• Most toilet paper rolls balanced on the head (101);
• Setting up a chess board in record time (30.31 seconds);
• Most axes caught consecutively while juggling (2,919);
• Most ping pong balls caught in shaving cream on a head (35); and
• My personal favorite: most kiwis sliced in one minute using a samurai sword while standing on a Swiss ball (62).

To see more of his amazing “accomplishments,” check out his YouTube video at: https://n.pr/3J4zfnQ.

But not to be outdone, here are some other records you might want to consider breaking:

• Longest fingernails (28 feet, 4.5 inches). It took Lee Redmond almost 30 years to grow them (until they were broken in an automobile accident): https://bit.ly/3uGY99x;
• Most candles extinguished by jump heel clicks in one minute (55): https://bit.ly/35H9JGV beating out the gentlemen who only extinguished 52 candles with nunchucks: https://bit.ly/3Hq6RfC; and
• Most rotations hanging from a power drill in a minute (148): https://bit.ly/3rqFLQb.

Can’t wait for tax season to end before kicking off your world record-breaking mission? Let’s try to think of tax-related records one might (not) want to aim for:

• Longest consecutive time waiting for IRS to answer phone while jumping on a pogo stick
• Most variables considered while evaluating whether taxpayer should participate in the 22 states offering passthrough entity elective taxes
• Most hours spent trying to recreate basis for original shareholder of 50-year-old S corporation that went through seven mergers and acquisitions
• Highest number of cuticle paper cuts from opening client tax documents
• Largest pile of balls of fugitive glue (aka “booger glue”) in the corner of your desk
• Most incorrect IRS Letters 6419

Kathryn Zdan, EA

Editorial Director

From the minute Paycheck Protection Program loans became available, PPP loan fraud was rampant, frustrating efforts to get cash to small businesses hit by the pandemic. But it seems that when you steal PPP funds, you can’t spend them on anything normal like bills or paying off a student loan or finally fixing that squeaking alternator belt that you’ve been squirting Ivory soap on. Go big or go home.

Crime pays … for a minute

In the first pandemic relief fraud case to go to trial, three San Fernando Valley family members were sentenced to prison for fraudulently obtaining $20 million in PPP loans and EIDL relief funds.¹

The family used dozens of fraudulent and stolen identities — including names belonging to elderly or deceased people and foreign exchange students who briefly visited the U.S. and never returned — to submit fraudulent applications for approximately 150 PPP and EIDL loans. They used the funds to buy homes in Tarzana, Glendale, and Palm Desert, as well as gold coins, diamonds, jewelry, luxury watches, fine imported furnishings, designer handbags, clothing, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

However, two of the sentenced family members are currently fugitives, having cut their tracking bracelets and going on the run.

You’ve gotta be Nidoking

Luxury homes? A stable of cars? Boring! That’s what everyone spends their stolen PPP funds on. But not a Georgia man, who was charged with wire fraud and is facing 20 years in prison after spending most of his loan disbursement on a single Pokémon card.²

He claimed he had a business with 10 employees and revenue of $235,000 over a year, netting him a PPP loan of $85,000. The court documents don’t say which card he purchased for $57,789, but unopened first-edition Pokémon cards can go for as much as $400,000.

Don’t worry, sports fans: The most valuable baseball card of all, the 1911 American Tobacco Company card of Honus Wagner, sold for $6.6 million in 2021.³