Gurmail Singh faces 3 years in jail, quarter million dollar fine.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian-origin business owner has been convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of a large sum of unpaid taxes.
Gurmail Singh, owner of the Fancy and Vicky Construction Company, Inc. in Richmond Hill, New York, admitted to hiding information about cashed checks from the people doing his federal tax returns. Between 2006 and 2008, Singh cashed checks reportedly worth a total of nearly $2.9 million.
Singh’s tax papers were investigated by agents from the US Department of Justice, who discovered the unreported checks and filed the case against him. The prosecutors for the IRS and Justice Department are trial attorneys Mark Kotila and Jeffrey Bender, both of whom are part of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.
By not including the checks in his tax statements – which are required to list total gross income for the year – Singh admitted to costing the IRS between $400,000 and $1,000,000.
Richmond Hills, located in the central-southern part of the New York City borough of Queens, is a generally middle-class and largely commercial part of the city. The city’s south side is home to a large population of immigrants from India and Bangladesh.
According to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a non-profit watchdog organization that keeps tabs on business across America and advocated better business practices by assigning accredited companies a letter grade to judge their practices, Fancy and Vicky Construction Company, Inc. is “not BBB accredited.”
The future of Fancy and Vicky Construction Company, Inc., as well as that of Singh’s family, is unknown at the moment.
Singh now faces the maximum penalty of up to three years in prison, with an additional fine of $250,000. His sentencing is scheduled to occur on January 6th, 2014.