A notoriously cranky lawyer who was disbarred for screaming at judges and fellow attorneys was all apologies in court yesterday as he copped a plea to tax evasion.
Kenneth Heller — whose irascible behavior earned him the nickname “Kenny Yeller” — agreed to cough up nearly $10 million in penalties in a bid to avoid the slammer for his Swiss banking scheme.
The ailing Heller, 82, admitted that he didn’t pay “a substantial amount of taxes” for 2006 through 2008 by stashing what the feds said was more than $26 million in overseas accounts at UBS and Wegelin & Co.
“Mr. Heller, did you know what you were doing was wrong and unlawful?” Manhattan federal Judge Kevin Castel asked him.
“I did, Your Honor,” Heller replied.
“May I apologize to the court?”
He also apologized “for my hearing” after saying he was suffering from memory loss and cancer that he blamed on lifting an atomic bomb “with my bare hands” during a World War II transport mission.
