Hired gun tax attorneys have fired their last bullet, and the sheriff has arrived in town.

A (worthless) tax attorney's opinion is behind most all tax frauds. An extremely lucrative piece of legal work when one short letter can help tax sham operators sells tax shelters in the $100's millions.

"Many opinion letters about tax-motivated transactions are basically worthless," says David Hariton, a tax partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. "They hide the ball within a matrix of boiler-plate recitations of complex regulations, but when you cut through all of the cant, what they really say is, 'this will work, unless it doesn't.' "

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Note: In spite of all of these recent events people blindly accept tax attorney opinions as the gospel. Investment bankers and advisor often mention a tax attorney's opinion clearing a tax scheme, to give clients a false sense of confidence in the scheme. Although a good honest tax attorney usually gives sound advice, they will inform the tax payer that a tax attorney's opinion carries no weight with the IRS. The only weight a tax attorney's opinion carries is with the SEC when considering negligence on the part of the investment banker or advisor in a wrongful tax case. The investment bankers and advisor hire the tax attorneys for both their own protection and to give false confidence to potential clients.