Death of Mike Durney (1/11/26)

 I received an email from Roger Olsen advising that Mike Durney died yesterday, 1/10/26. He received the information from Mike’s daughter. The funeral will be at St. Patrick’s Church, which I assume is the one at 619 Tenth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001. The plans have not yet been set. When I have more information (such as an obituary), I will post an update to this blog.

My database indicates that Mike's service with DOJ Tax was

TAX DIV ALUMNI SECTIONS

SECTION	POSITION	BEGYEAR	ENDYEAR
FRONT OFFICE	DEP A.A.G, ACTING A.A.G	1986	1988
REFUND 3	TRIAL ATTORNEY	1968	1972

Mike was predeceased by his wife, Ann Belanger Durney, longtime DOJ Tax Appellate attorney, who died in October 2001.

Interesting Article Featuring DOJ Tax Attorneys (Now Alumni) (1/11/26)

Alumni might be interested in this recent article: Jens Heycke, Tax Enforcers Are Actually the Good Guys (The Dispatch 1/6/26), here. The subtopic is: By cutting resources for prosecuting rich tax cheats, the Trump administration is leaving billions of dollars on the table.

Here is the most relevant excerpt for the Tax Division:

          In 2014, a group of Department of Justice Tax Division attorneys went to a Washington Nationals game, hoping to enjoy a night off watching baseball. But when a camera found them and the ballpark’s Jumbotron flashed “DOJ Tax Division,” the stadium booed them so loudly it rattled the ice cubes in their drinks.

          Few government functions provoke as much reflexive hostility as tax enforcement. This is not lost on the IRS. Its Washington headquarters appears on Google Maps under the obscure label “DC0022 Government Office,” as if anonymity might spare it from the public’s animus. It doesn’t. Nearly 80 percent of the reviews of the building on Constitution Avenue are one star, with comments like: “Horrible organization that needs to be shut down.”

          But here’s what those reviewers and the Nationals crowd missed: The same year those DOJ tax prosecutors got booed, they forced Credit Suisse to pay $2.6 billion for its role in assisting ultra-rich tax evaders. With one settlement, they recovered more than 20 times their annual budget. Meanwhile, the prosecutor who told me about the Nationals Park episode was spearheading another massive investigation. The case, which involved data encrypted into photographs, false-bottom briefcases, and custom-encrypted servers, was settled last month for more than $750 million.

Also, the following except may not be right in that the DOJ Tax Criminal attorneys were transferred to the Criminal Division:

          This year, the Trump administration dismantled the DOJ’s Tax Division, dispersing its attorneys and enforcement functions. The specialists who know how to chase money hidden offshore were relocated to regional U.S. Attorney offices, where they will be assigned to other tasks. Many of the top tax prosecutors have resigned.

Also, I recommend that those with time and interest browse the comments to the article.

Heycke also authored Death, Taxes, and Turduckens: Unraveling History’s Biggest Tax Heist And the Broken System That Enabled It (2025), Amazon here, about the Brockman tax fraud, prosecution, and death avoiding conviction. For Federal Tax Crimes Blog posts on Brockman, see here.

 

Death of Lillie Davis Neamo (1/11/26)

Lillie Davis Neamo passed away 1/1/26. See WAPO obituary here. According to the obituary, she served at DOJ for 42 years and “served as a Supervisory Litigation Assistant for the Tax Division, Appellate Section,” which I presume was her most recent position at DOJ Tax.

According to the obituary, events on 1/14/26 are visitation (10-11am) and service (11am-12pm) at Marshall-March Funeral Homes - The District of Columbia, 5119 4th St. NW, Washington, DC 20011.