LOS ANGELES -- Composer Dominic Frontiere, husband of Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, pleaded guilty Wednesday to tax charges stemming from the scalping of thousands of the team's tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl.
Under terms of a plea agreement reached Monday, the 55-year-old Emmy Award winner also admitted in federal court he lied to Internal Revenue Service investigators by claiming he did not know the man who had sold the tickets for him.
U.S. District Judge William Keller scheduled sentencing for Dec. 8 and allowed Frontiere to remain free on $5,000 bail. He faces a maximum penalty of eight years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Ticket scalping is legal in California, if not done at the site of the event, but any proceeds must be reported as income.
Frontiere had been charged in a three-count indictment June 19 with filing a false 1980 joint tax return and lying to IRS agents.
Prosecutors said they will ask the judge to dismiss the third charge -- that Frontiere obstructed the IRS probe by asking the key witness to lie to investigators.
Richard Leon, a prosecutor for the tax division of the Justice Department, said Frontiere does not owe any extra taxes as a result of the ticket-scalping profits, but stressed, 'The offense is the making of a false return,' which he likened to perjury.
Although he didn't specifically address the allegation of not claiming the money as income, Frontiere admitted he illegally claimed a $116,335 deduction for complimentary tickets.
'My state of mind was that I didn't owe the government any money (for 1980 taxes). For some reason or another, I said (to accountants) to write them (the tickets) all off,' Frontiere told the judge.
Frontiere, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, also admitted he lied to IRS investigators when he told them he did not know Raymond Cohen, a convicted counterfeitor-turned-government-witness who allegedly sold the tickets for Frontiere and gave him the proceeds.
'I felt I was being threatened at the time. That's why I lied,' Frontiere told Keller.
In their only appearance in the Super Bowl, the Rams lost the 1980 game at the Rose Bowl to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Frontiere has written scores for television and motion pictures. He won an Emmy for the music to a 1970 television special, 'Swing Out, Sweet Land.'
