Taxable Talk

I’ve written about Nifty Fifty’s before. It’s a Philadelphia-area chain featuring food themed from the 1950s. The owners of the chain used ideas from the 1850s to help their profitability: They skimmed cash, paid employees in both paychecks and the skimmed cash, paid supplies with the skimmed cash, inflated expenses on their tax returns, and submitted false tax returns to bank to obtain loans. The five owners all pled guilty to various tax charges and were sentenced last year. Full restitution is being made to the IRS.

However, that wasn’t the end of the story. The accountant who prepared Nifty Fifty’s tax returns is now under indictment. William Frio is charged with conspiracy to commit tax evasion, filing false tax returns (his own returns), structuring, and loan fraud. Mr. Frio is alleged to have taken active participation in the Nifty Fifty’s tax evasion scheme. Frio is also alleged to have falsified a loan application and structured transactions with the same bank. And the structuring that happened is alleged to be quite large ($2.6 million). During this same time period he allegedly didn’t report some income that he received from another corporate account on his personal tax return.

The most interesting accusation in the indictment is that Mr. Frio allegedly embezzled “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from Nifty Fifty’s. “Oft evil will shall evil mar.”

Mr. Frio faces up to 57 years at ClubFed plus restitution to the IRS if found guilty of all charges.

Tags: Nifty.Fiftys

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2014 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Tax Evasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.