After minor success, Jackie began to trust in Nat a little too much with his financial matters. Jackie trusted Nat enough to sign him over as power of attorney, which gave Nat access to all of his legal dealings including but not limited to house notes, car notes, show earnings, and his own direct pay checks. Tarnopol's move to power of attorney ignited the infamous money laundering scandal that landed Jackie with many financial hardships. According to documents retrieved by Wilson's attorney, Mr. Adourian, Nat Tarnopol's accounting procedures at Brunswick not only displayed inconsistencies in the calculation of funds to be retrieved by Jackie, but also inconsistencies in the calculations for other Brunswick label mates of that time(Douglas 254). This meant that since Nat Tarnopol had no access to the information about other Brunswick artist earnings, the managers of these other artist must have also been engaging in similar scheming tactics involving artist royalties and assets (Wax Poetics).
Jackie began to experience the greed of Tarnopol in 1959 when he told mulct lies about finances that cost Jackie and family their home. In 1963 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seized Wison's home. Wilson's wife, Freda, had to say about this particular incident in an interview:"Nat was supposed to take care of that{finances}.
cause he had power of attorney. We"d sign all the papers and he let us believe everything was okay. Any mail that Nat was getting he did not say nothing about next thing you know it's "in the name of the united states government we now seize this property"(Douglas 141) .
Even the Internal Revenue Service believed that Tarnopol had the money and pulled the wool over Jackie's eyes. Nat also claimed that he was not taking his ten percent that he was in fact entitled to, but yet he was living to lavishly for belief because at that point, Nat owned an expensive apartment but when he started he had nothing.
