Two corporate tax fraud stories crossed the wires today. In one case the participant will spend over 20 years at ClubFed; the other will almost certainly spend significant time there too.
Frank Amadeo bragged that one day he’ll rule the world. Well, he didn’t send $181 million to the IRS, so perhaps he could have afforded a small country. That’s after he spends the next 22 1/2 years at ClubFed. He was sentenced yesterday and must also make $181 million in restitution. If there’s a certainty in tax prosecutions, it’s that if you don’t remit trust fund taxes you will be prosecuted. Peter Pappas has more on this story.
Meanwhile, two orders of magnitude less still is a large amount of fraud. Fisher Sand & Gravel operates twelve plants and is a big player in the aggregate industry. The IRS began an audit and discovered that one executive, Michael Fisher, had used company funds for an African safari and to renovate a truck stop he owned. Since those were personal expenses (and not “necessary and ordinary” business expenses) that’s a problem. Mr. Fisher will be pleading guilty to tax fraud later this week. Two other executives, Amiel Schaff (the former CFO) and Clyde Frank (the former comptroller) previously pleaded guilty. The company itself is under a deferred prosecution agreement and will be making restitution of $1.17 million relating to 2001-2004 corporate taxes. Additionally, the company is cooperating in a probe of 2005-2009 corporate taxes.