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Petitioners concede that they underreported their 2000
taxable income in the amount of $248,524 by failing to report the
total of the checks Mr. Oria received from Medico in that year.
They claim that they did so on the advice of Mr. Loeser. They do
not claim that Mr. Oria was not aware of the total of salary
checks that, during 2000, he had signed on behalf of, and
received from, Medico. They claim that they relied on Mr. Loeser
to prepare a correct income tax return for them. Mr. Oria was
aware that Medico was participating in a plan designed by Mr.
Loeser under which Medico was paying Mr. Loeser money so that,
Mr. Loeser claimed, Mr. Oria could save on taxes. A reasonably
prudent person would not rely on an adviser having an interest in
the subject of the advice. Neonatology Associates, P.A. v.
Commissioner, 115 T.C. 43, 99 (2000), affd. 299 F.3d 221 (3d Cir.
2002). Moreover, Mr. Oria made no attempt to understand the
transactions Medico was engaging in to implement Mr. Loeser’s
plan. The detail of those transactions was spelled out in
Medico’s tax returns and the general ledger, yet Mr. Oria was
uninterested in Mr. Loeser’s explanation of those documents,
regarding their contents as “mumbo jumbo numbers”. The
assumption underlying the erroneous credits posted to his drawing
account was either that he had paid Mr. Loeser or one of his
affiliates directly on Medico’s behalf or that he had reimbursed
Medico, which had paid Mr. Loeser or one of his affiliates. Had
he paid attention to Mr. Loeser’s explanations, Mr. Oria would
have realized that the factual premises relied on by Mr. Loeser
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