The luxury yacht Albula is currently off Mallorca but who is on board remains a mystery because its owner, a billionaire software developer who was fighting the biggest individual tax evasion case in US history, died at his home in Houston last month.
Robert Brockman, 81, a self-taught software entrepreneur who developed a system that helped car dealers run their operations virtually, had been fighting IRS allegations of money laundering and tax evasion worth more than $2 billion since 2020.
Prosecutors said that Brockman, who had a personal net worth of $4.7 billion, owned an $8 million mansion in Houston, a Colorado ski cabin, a Bormbardier jet and a 209 foot yacht.
Born in Florida, where his father ran a gas station and his mother worked as a physiotherapist, Brockman registered dozens of patents, and founded Reynolds & Reynolds, a software company that boasted more than 5,000 employees and was worth more than $5 billion, according to Bloomberg.
In October 2020, federal prosecutors charged Brockman with using offshore companies, code names and burner phones to hide more than $2 billion of income from the IRS, most of it earned through Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that he helped launch.