The Associated Press is reporting that former NFL player Chris Zorich has been charged for tax evasion. The football player has allegedly not filed federal income tax returns for “over four years.”
Zorich played for Notre Dame in college and was an All-American before being drafted to the NFL in 1991. He played for the Chicago Bears until 1997, and then capped off his NFL career with one year with the Washington Redskins in 1997. Zorich was a member of the 1988 Notre Dame football team that went undefeated and won the National Championship.
An attorney for Zorich told the AP that he would be pleading guilty to four misdemeanor counts for not filing tax returns between 2006 and 2009. Each misdemeanor count has a maximum one year prison sentence and $100,000 fine. The former athlete is alleged to have made over $1 million during that time, including income from the Christopher Zorich Foundation, a charity he founded in 1993 to help disadvantaged families.
In 2010, the Chicago Tribune reported that over $850,000 was missing from the Christopher Zorich Foundation, and that the organization had not filed taxes since 2003. Late last year, Zorich agreed to pay nearly $350,000 in unaccounted-for funds back to his charity after an Illinois Attorney General investigation.