A Colombian-American entrepreneur residing in Miami has acknowledged her involvement in defrauding federal authorities following two plea agreements related to separate cases in Florida and Texas. Gilda Rosenberg, who operates a vending machine business in Miami-Dade County and was previously sued by NBA player Alonzo Mourning, pleaded guilty to federal charges concerning tax evasion.
According to federal prosecutors, Rosenberg and her family concealed approximately $90 million across various offshore locations, including Andorra, Israel, Panama, and Switzerland. This revelation stems from an investigation into a conspiracy involving tax evasion.
Court documents reveal that Rosenberg, 60, previously had a banking relationship with Credit Suisse Group AG, which has since merged with UBS Group AG. In 2014, Credit Suisse reached a plea agreement that required the bank to pay $2.6 billion for assisting U.S. taxpayers in hiding assets from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Prosecutors allege that members of Rosenberg’s family maintained offshore accounts dating back to the 1970s and that she, along with two relatives, participated in efforts to evade U.S. taxes. Rosenberg holds degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Miami and founded Gilly Vending in 1983, a company based in Miami Gardens.
By the late 1990s, she became an authorized signer on several family accounts, which were subsequently consolidated through Credit Suisse accounts in the early 2000s. Following the closure of these accounts in 2013, the family transferred their assets to new accounts at Bank Leumi in Israel, Union Bancaire Privée (UBP), PKB Privat Bank SA in Switzerland, and an Andorran financial institution.
Investigators found that Rosenberg owned accounts at both UBP and the Andorran bank, where she falsely declared herself as a Colombian resident rather than a U.S. citizen. Records indicate that she is a registered Republican residing in Golden Beach, Florida, and also owns an apartment in Aventura.
Prosecutors assert that around 2017, Rosenberg and her family attempted to obscure their financial activities by misrepresenting asset transfers as gifts to a relative who had renounced U.S. citizenship while also fabricating loan and investment documentation.
In 2019, Gilly Vending garnered media attention when a civil court judge ruled that Rosenberg’s company owed Mourning approximately $590,000 due to a legal dispute regarding unpaid compensation from a 2015 agreement that made him the public face of the company’s healthy vending initiative.
Following the initiation of federal proceedings against her in Texas last year, Rosenberg admitted to conspiring to defraud the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which operates vending machines at military installations globally. Investigators alleged that she submitted false reports to evade fulfilling contractual commission obligations.
In a separate case in Miami federal court, Rosenberg acknowledged having filed tax returns from 2010 to 2017 that omitted over $5.5 million in income derived from her assets at UBP, resulting in a tax loss of $1.9 million for the IRS. The IRS Criminal Investigation’s International Tax & Financial Crimes Unit continues to investigate the matter, with Rosenberg’s sentencing for the Miami case scheduled for May 30.
