How Austin billionaire Robert Smith avoided indictment for evading $43 million in federal taxes Attorney General William Barr ultimately made the call to handle Smith’s case with a non-prosecution agreement. Visate Equity's Robert Smith of Austin is best known for paying off the college debt of Morehouse College graduates in 2019.(Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post) U.S. prosecutors and Internal Revenue Service agents spent four years piercing the veil of secrecy that billionaire money manager Robert F. Smith wove to hide more than $200 million in income. Last year, according to people familiar with the matter, a team led by the Justice Department’s top tax prosecutor argued to then-Attorney General William Barr that the evidence warranted indicting Smith, who had made headlines for pledging to pay the student debt of a Morehouse College graduating class.