RICHMOND, Va. — A Newport News attorney who also served as a substitute judge in Hampton Roads district courts was sentenced to more than four years behind bars for tax evasion Thursday.
In a roughly hour-long sentencing hearing at the federal courthouse in downtown Richmond, U.S. District Judge David J. Novak ordered Nosuk Pak Kim to serve 52 months in federal prison. Kim was also handed a $200,000 fine and ordered to pay $870,000 in restitution for unpaid federal income taxes.
The 52-month sentence was steeper than the 46 months prosecutors requested, but well within the federal sentencing guidelines in the case, which called for a range of 46-57 months.
Immediately after the hearing, Kim, the co-founder of the Newport News law firm Cowardin & Kim, was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals and transported to Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw. A booking photo for Kim was not immediately available.
The charges came less than a year after her husband, 63-year-old Beyung S. Kim, and their adopted son, Seung Kim, were sentenced for their roles in an elaborate defense contract fraud scheme that sought millions of dollars in federal contracts with "made in America" requirements, while secretly fulfilling them with relabeled Chinese goods.
Nosuk Kim was never charged in that case, but her tax evasion offenses are linked to proceeds from that underlying fraud case which put her husband and adopted son behind bars. Seung Kim was released from federal custody in January 2022, and Beyung Kim is scheduled for release in July 2024.
Kim, 61, was active in local and state community organizations, according to a biography on her former law firm's website. The Warwick High School graduate co-founded the Peninsula School for Autism in 2009 and also taught classes as an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary law school.
She resigned her substitute judge post on July 1, 2022, just a few days before prosecutors filed tax evasion charges against her, and quickly pleaded guilty to dodging hundreds of thousands of dollars of income tax assessments from 2015 and 2016.
Hampton-based attorney Timothy G. Clancy, who represented Kim in the case, asked Judge Novak for leniency, writing in a recent filing that "a sentence...well below the guideline range...would be sufficient to deter Kim’s future criminal conduct," particularly given "the added factors of shame, humiliation and loss of her law license and her law practice."
Kim filed 85 pages of character letters with the court, and Clancy noted she had no prior criminal history before this case.
But prosecutors argued Nosuk and Beyung Kim were driven by boundless greed, writing in a recent filing that "there was no financial exigency or reason [for them] to do any of this...the defendant and her husband lived a life of luxury in their waterfront home on the James River and made substantial sums of money from [her] law practice, their joint real-estate holdings, and her husband’s business."
Those real-estate holdings include a 3,500 square-foot home on a nearly five-acre waterfront lot on Ferguson Cove, nestled in one of Newport News' most affluent neighborhoods. The property's value is currently assessed at more than $1.4 million, according to city real estate records.
"[Kim] enriched herself at the expense of the rest of us...she and her husband laundered millions of dollars to avoid paying their fair share," prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum filed ahead of Thursday's hearing.
"As a licensed attorney and substitute judge, the defendant knew better."
