A Hawaii island man has been found guilty in a California federal court of several counts involving a tax scheme to defraud the government and blackmail his clients.

Eric Aaron Lighter, 61, of Volcano, was found guilty Dec. 20 in U.S. District Court in San Jose of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit blackmail and witness tampering.

The conspiracy began in the 1990s with an organization known as National Trust Services, which sold trust packages, according to a Department of Justice news release.

After the Internal Revenue Service began investigating National Trust Services, Lighter worked with a tax return preparer to create fraudulent tax returns, financial transactions and other documents to hinder federal agents from collecting taxes from NTS members, the department said.

Lighter told some of his clients to transfer their assets — including real estate and nearly $500,000 in cash — to his corporations, telling the clients that the transfers would protect their assets from the IRS and assuring them that he would return their assets at a later date, the department said.

When the clients tried to recover their assets, Lighter refused to hand them over. One client was told that he would face criminal prosecution if he did not drop his civil lawsuit seeking to recover his property from Lighter.

Lighter will be sentenced in March. He faces 20 years’ imprisonment for each of eight counts of wire fraud and additional time and possible fines for the other counts.