These 8 Celebrities Have Evaded Taxes
Liam Parker
Updated on March 30, 2026
In February 2008, a federal jury convicted actor Wesley Snipes—the star of the Blade film series, as well as the sports comedies Major League (1989) and White Men Can’t Jump (1992)—on three counts of failing to file to file tax returns from 1999 through 2001. Two months later, he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for each count.
According to Newsweek, Snipes owed $23.5 million and had offered to pay only $842,000 to clear his debt.
Snipes, 60, unsuccessfully appealed the ruling and eventually surrendered at McKean Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania on December 8, 2010. He served two and a half years of his sentence and was released in April 2013.
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Snipes said he “came out a clearer person. Clearer on my values, clearer on my purpose, clearer about my relationship with my ancestors and the great god and the great goddess above, and clearer on what I was going to do once I had my freedom back.”
