Former GD manager sentenced

From Yahoo news:

A former manager for the Grateful Dead has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for tax evasion, prosecutors said.

Ronald Leon Rakow, 69, was ordered to begin his prison term in June for evading payment of $2.2 million in taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. attorney’s office said Tuesday.
….

Rakow had asked for a lighter sentence, but U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Morrow rejected his request. She said he chose to break the law to support his “comfortable lifestyle.”

Here’s a very interesting and comprehensive article about Rakow through the window of a Scientology investigation:

One of the most interesting (and sleazy) names we’ve come across in investigating the Reed Slatkin case has been Ron Rakow.

According to trusted sources, Ron Rakow flew to Switzerland in 2001, allegedly at the behest of his “good friend” and fellow Scientologist Reed Slatkin, in order to investigate “irregularities” in Slatkin’s overseas accounts. The catch? According to documents filed so far, there is some question as to whether these “Swiss accounts” existed in the first place.

As part of a last-ditch effort to fend off increasingly suspicious investors, Slatkin forged documents from a major Swiss bank to back up his story that the funds were frozen pending an investigation into possible money laundering. When investigators attempted to confirm the existence of the accounts, they came up empty handed and discovered that the account numbers themselves, as given by Slatkin, corresponded to no known Swiss accounts under his, or any other name.

Publicly, Ron Rakow seems to be best known for his days with the Grateful Dead, although there are differing opinions on how good a job he did while acting as the band’s manager – or “manager”, as he is derisively referred in this footnote to an article that appeared in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment Law & Practice (How the Grateful Dead Turned Alternative Business and Legal Strategies Into A Great American Success Story By Brian C. Drobnik, Spring 2000 Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 242-266, footnote #135):

“Under their contract with Warner Brothers, they had split revenue ten ways equally among each band member, their two roadies and their two managers. The inception of Grateful Dead Records created a straightforward arrangement between the band and Grateful Dead Records “manager” Ron Rakow (whom they had hired to direct the project). There was also a separate agreement between Rakow and Garcia for Round Records projects. This, of course, introduced jealously to utopia. However, Garcia was doing virtually all of the songwriting and arranging, with others receiving royalty cuts as “arrangers.” The understanding was that Grateful Dead songs really were arranged on stage, over the course of dozens of live performances. In this sense, including a drummer as an arranger may have been more than simply a political gesture, though Scully argues otherwise.” 

There’s a lot more on that page.

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