Celebrity News

Bar Refaeli gets community service for tax evasion, mom gets prison time

Supermodel Bar Refaeli on Tuesday signed a plea deal to perform nine months’ community service in Israel over tax-evasion charges — while her mother will serve 16 months in prison.

The deal is part of a years-long criminal probe into the 35-year-old model (above), who was accused of falsely claiming she lived with then-boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio in the US rather than Tel Aviv.

Along with Refaeli’s community service, her mother, Tzipi Refaeli, agreed to serve 16 months behind bars — and they will each pay fines of almost $725,000 plus $2.3 million in back taxes, the Times of Israel said.

Refaeli — who gave birth to her third child in January — had argued that her on-off relationship with DiCaprio made them a family unit, justifying her claims that the United States was her home at the time, rather than Israel.

But prosecutors said she and her mother used it as a cover to hide tens of millions of dollars in earnings from tax authorities in Israel between 2009 and 2012, according to the reports.

Refaeli’s lawyers said the plea bargain proved she hadn’t intentionally evaded tax payments.

“In the relevant time period, Bar was in her early 20s, was working as an international model and was not involved in financial matters,” they said in a statement.

“Today she is taking responsibility for mistakes that were made.”

With Wires