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District Court for the Middle District of Florida.According to the government complaint in the case, the scheme involvedclaiming tax credits based on the purported recovery and sale of methane fromlandfills in Puerto Rico, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Connecticut. In fact,the government’s complaint states that no methane was produced or sold,although some of the defendants created fictitious business records to falselydocument the purported production and sales. The eight men enjoined are George Calvert of Hernando Beach, Fla.; GregoryGuido of Lithia, Fla.; Robert Anderson of Bloomington, Ill.; Ralph Johnson ofAlton, Ill.; David Geiger of St. Charles, Mo.; William Neel of Clayton Mo.;Mark Johnson of Mansfield, Texas; and Carl Martin-Stewart of Carthage, Texas.All eight consented to be enjoined without admitting wrongdoing. The lawsuitremains pending against the other 24 individual defendants, although the caseagainst some defendants has been transferred to a federal court in Texas.

The government suit alleges that Calvert and Guido, who is a CPA, concoctedthe scheme and promoted it through tax preparers who acted as subpromoters -including Ralph Johnson, Mark Johnson, Geiger and Neel, who is also a CPA. Thetax preparers allegedly sold interests in the fictitious methane-productionfacilities to thousands of customers in at least 14 states across the countryand prepared income tax returns for customers claiming tax credits based onthe fictitious methane sales. According to the complaint, Martin-Stewart sold the scheme to customers andhelped create promotional materials that were distributed to subpromoters andcustomers. The complaint alleges that Anderson prepared false engineeringreports for the scheme promoters to use to purportedly substantiate thefictitious methane production. On June 15th Anderson pleaded guilty toconspiracy to defraud the United States and mail fraud in a related federalcriminal case.

He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.The injunction orders also bar the eight men from interfering with orobstructing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits of scheme participants. Inaddition, Calvert is permanently barred from preparing federal tax returns forothers or representing anyone in a matter before the IRS.John DiCicco, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’sTax Division, thanked Shana Starnes, the Justice Department trial attorney whohandled the case, and Jean Lane, a revenue agent with the IRS’s SmallBusiness/Self-Employed Division, who conducted the investigation.In the past decade, the Justice Department has obtained injunctions againstmore than 410 tax return preparers and tax-fraud promoters. Information aboutthe Justice Department’s Tax Division and its efforts to enjoin unscrupuloustax return preparers and tax-fraud promoters is available on the JusticeDepartment Web site.SOURCEU.S Department of JusticeU.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, +1-202-514-2007, TDD,+1-202-514-1888. HOUSTON, July 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Sterling Bancshares, Inc. (Nasdaq:SBIB) will report earnings for the second quarter of 2009 on Tuesday morning,July 21, 2009, before the market opens.Management of Sterling will host a conference call for investors and analyststhat will be broadcast live via the Internet on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, at11:00 a.m.