leaving it in tatters while revenue officials tagged dozens of his clients and investors for millions of dollars in back taxes from the deals he arranged, has had his law license suspended.
Rodney Atherton was suspended for four months after admitting he violated five rules of professional conduct when he helped clients profit from tax credits that came with investing in companies he created to take advantage of the state’s conservation-easement rules.
Another 14 months of suspension were set aside pending his successful completion of a two-year probation period, according to the ruling issued last month by Judge William Lucero, who presides over attorney discipline for the Colorado Supreme Court.
“I don’t know that I can have a comment,” was all Atherton offered when reached by The Denver Post last week.
The discipline is the culmination of several years of troubles that began when beginning in late 2007. Those inquiries led to Atherton.
His clients, i, reaped financial windfalls by investing with Atherton companies, then selling the resulting state tax credits while taking hefty deductions on federal tax returns.
But the windfall didn’t last. Investors say they lost millions of dollars in the unsound deals and were double-dipped by companies involved in making them — many of them run by Atherton or his family, yet unknown to his clients.
Some of the easement deals Atherton created — huge projects that on paper were real estate developments — and the appraisals they balanced on were “abusive” and “fundamentally flawed,” according to expert testimony filed in a when the system toppled.
In his ruling, Lucero noted how Atherton carried on multiple, overlapping roles — all conflicts of interest — in taking advantage of a program designed to protect valuable land from future development.
Now a partner at Ergo Law in Arvada, , recommended the appraisers, served on the boards of the charities that held the easements, prepared tax-credit sales, hired his father’s company to prepare reports, hired his wife’s company to sell the credits — and never told any of his clients of the interconnections, Lucero wrote.
Although Atherton created dozens of easement-related companies, the complaint focused on : one that turned a lucrative hunting club into a ; and investments he made for client who would later find notoriety by working and investing with hedge-fund manager Sean Mueller, who is serving time for running a Ponzi scheme.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or twitter.com/davidmigoya
