Finance
IRS Pursues Promoters of Green Tax Breaks Worth Tens of Billions
A strategy long used by farmers and conservationists lures investors seeking shelters.
Illustration: Claire Merchlinsky for Bloomberg Businessweek
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Jack Fisher has raised hundreds of millions of dollars pitching investors on real estate development projects that were never built.
Fisher, an accountant-turned-developer, promoted projects such as the Preserve at Venice Harbor, near Hilton Head, S.C., where marketing illustrations showed houses on canals that evoked the famous Italian city. Instead of developing the land, he recruited investors to elaborate deals that provided them charitable tax deductions in return for donating easements for conservation. The Internal Revenue Service, however, suspects the deals may amount to tax fraud.