George Bernard Shaw was my age when he wrote the comedy that provides the title for today’s final installment of Gregory Raifman and Susan Raifman, 2018 T. C. Memo. 101, filed 7/3/18.

Greg and Sue have been long-running players on this my blog, so it’s hard to say goodbye. Longtime readers will remember my blogposts “We Wuz Robbed,” 8/7/12; “An Unerring Nose for Fraud,” 2/27/15; “I Wanna Testify – Part Deux,” 6/5/15; and “The Night of the Living Dead – Part Deux,” 1/23/18.

But Judge Nega finally puts an end to this long-running show. CA may have a one-size-fits-all larceny statute, incorporating everything from armed robbery to larceny by trick or device, but specific criminal intent (“the evil-meaning mind and the evil-doing hand”) must be proven to establish the kinds of theft that Greg and Sue need.

Greg and Sue may have been robbed by the improbably-named-but-larcenously-inclined Yuri Debevc Derivium, but they can’t establish in what year all hope of recovery vanished, or prove classic criminal intent. While ClassicStar may have been a total tax-dodge, likewise Greg and Sue can’t prove the requisite criminal intent on the part of the promoters: at worst, they were merely flogging a bogus dodge, intending to rob the fisc but not specifically Greg and Sue. And ClassicStar wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, entitling Greg and Sue to the largesse extended to the victims of Bernie Madoff.

Greg and Sue also got mixed up in a truly shady hard money lending scheme, where they thought they were secured lenders but really weren’t (there was an assignment of collateral, supposedly, but what was assigned was dubious), but again, the criminal intent wasn’t proven.

Finally, Greg and Sue got into a movie deal that cratered, and they had a real loss, but not in the year they claimed, as they got some money back the following year.

IRS wants a reopener to enGraev (sorry, guys) approval of the chops, and they get it. Greg and Sue want to cross-examine the RA and supervisor, but Judge Nega says “no.” IRS has the signed forms, and that does it.

Besides, Greg was a lawyer doing corporate high finance and Sue was a CPA. Too sophisticated not to know that these deals were too good to be true.

Curtain.