On second try, former UC Davis veterinarian succeeds at pleading guilty in tax case

After a failed attempt last month to plead guilty to tax evasion, prominent equine veterinarian and former UC Davis professor Jack Ray Snyder succeeded Monday, and now faces up to five years in a federal prison.

Snyder, 63, accepted responsibility for failing to report more than $200,000 in income from the 2011 tax year, when he told the Internal Revenue Service he had earned $299,279.

Appearing in federal court in Sacramento via a Zoom video conference from his office in Florida, Snyder acknowledged attempting to evade paying the full amount of taxes owed and pleaded guilty to a single felony count as part of a plea agreement hammered out earlier with federal prosecutors.

Snyder, who oversaw treatment of horses at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, had been scheduled to enter his plea last month, but Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb refused to accept the guilty plea then after Snyder began making excuses for his legal troubles and appeared to be blaming an assistant for part of his difficulties.

That prompted Shubb to halt that hearing and tell him bluntly, “I will not accept a guilty plea from an innocent man. I will not send an innocent man to prison.”

Snyder had no such issues during Monday’s hearing, and Shubb made plain to him that he could face up to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine at sentencing.

Snyder still faces a lawsuit by UC Davis for allegedly failing to report outside income, something he has denied as part of the suit.