Lauryn Order: Former Fugee has IRS trouble

Remember "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill"?

Part of that miseducation must have involved taxes.

Hill has been charged with failing to file income-tax returns for several years with the IRS, the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey announced Thursday.

The former member of the Fugees earned more than $1.6 million during 2005, 2006 and 2007, the three years that she failed to file returns, federal prosecutors said. If this had happened a decade earlier, she would owe a lot more.

After her wildly popular 1998 solo album, Hill largely disappeared from public view to raise her six children, five of whom she had with Rohan Marley, the son of famed reggae singer Bob Marley.

She lives in South Orange, a suburb just west of Newark.

Hill is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate on June 29. She could face a maximum penalty of a year in prison and $100,000 fine on each charge.

Another former Fugee, Wyclef Jean, has also had battles with the IRS over unpaid taxes.

That Poe is some storyteller.

We're referring to Timothy Michael, not Edgar Allan.

This Poe, you may recall, is the stuttering soldier singer who wowed "America's Got Talent" with his country-music talent and tale of a brain injury in Afghanistan from getting hit by a grenade.

Wednesday we learned that the Minnesota National Guard had no record of Poe's injuries in Afghanistan and that his story had a few holes in it.

Poe fought back, arguing that one of the problems with Army injury records in Afghanistan is that the Army can't keep track of them.

Then TMZ.com reported Thursday that the photo of Poe in fatigues the show used wasn't Poe at all, but Staff Sgt. Norman Bone, who is mulling legal action over the mistake.

Bone told TMZ, "First thing that came to my mind was, 'Why would this lying son of a bitch do this,'" adding, "I'm absolutely furious. Been seeing red all day."

Poe's fiancée, Carrie Morris, answered this charge with the moral equivalent of … oops.

She says Poe made a "mistake" when he gave the show a photograph of a different soldier.

"AGT" producer FremantleMedia North America apologized Thursday, saying the photo came from Poe and was used "in good faith."

They then got a really big spatula to start scraping the egg off their corporate face.

TATTBITS

"American Idol" winner Phillip Phillips, who was plagued by serious kidney problems during the national karaoke contest, is recovering from surgery.

A spokeswoman for the series said Thursday that the operation went well and that Phillips will be ready for the July 6 start of the "American Idol" national tour.

Our 24/ 7 colleague Dan Gross reports that Paula Abdul danced with the Phillie Phanatic at Thursday afternoon's Phillies-Dodgers game. Abdul sat in a suite with Wharton alum Mike Milken, the once-jailed "Junk Bond King" who is now chairman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne are being sued for illegally extending their Los Angeles garden onto the land of their neighbor.

A lawsuit filed by the Mountain View Estate Owners' Association claims the couple have extended their garden roughly 8,500 square feet.

Eighty-five hundred square feet? That's not a garden, that's a national park.

— BANGShowbiz.com and Daily news wire services contributed to this report.