Anchorage Daily News

A local real estate agent and her engineer husband were sentenced to a one-year house confinement and fined $30,000 each for failing to file a tax return.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Smith this week sentenced Kathy and Vincent Fernandez. The unusual sentence comes after an April deal with prosecutors reducing their original charges of not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in income between 1999 and 2001 and failing to pay $120,000 in taxes on it. In the deal, the couple agreed to plead no contest to the misdemeanor of failing to file a 2001 federal income tax return.

Vincent Fernandez, 62, and Kathy Fernandez, 65, will be allowed to work for the year but must wear ankle monitors and be confined to their upper Hillside home at night, the judge said.

Kathy Fernandez was a successful real estate agent with Prudential Jack White/Vista Real Estate when arrested. She continues to practice today.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas Bradley and Crandon Randell argued unsuccessfully that the couple be required to do prison time.

"This is a theft of over $100,000," Bradley said in a phone interview today. "Stealing money from the government is really no different than breaking into the post office and stealing $100,000 worth of stamps or forging $100,000 worth of government checks."

Kathy Fernandez's lawyer, Tim Petumenos, today said the sentence is appropriate because it allows the couple to work to pay back the IRS. He said his client never intended to steal. A combination of family troubles, including sick family members, poor accounting advice and procrastination landed his client with the charges, he said.

In his sentencing memorandum, Bradley refered to several similar recent cases in which people were sentenced to prison time. He also argued that "there should be no middle-class sentencing discount or Robin Hood departure in this case."

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