The 56-year-old Indian American restaurateur will face a minimum of 30 years jail.
By Raghavendra M
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A 56-year-old Indian American restaurateur from New York has been arrested by federal agents in connection with a fraud scheme that involved millions of dollars. He will face a minimum of 30 years jail.
Harendra Singh, a prominent Long Island restaurateur, has been indicted with multiple counts of honest services wire fraud, federal program bribery, disaster relief fraud, conspiring to defraud the US, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice.
Singh was arrested and arraigned before the Magistrate Judge A. Kathleen Tomlinson at the US Courthouse, Central Islip, NY.
“Harendra Singh ran his businesses through fraud and deceit, using bribes and kickbacks to tilt the playing field in the Town of Oyster Bay. He accomplished this by lying to FEMA and the IRS in order to obtain hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Sandy disaster relief funds,†stated Kelly T. Currie, Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
The indictment alleged that Singh fraudulently under-reported to the IRS the true amount of money certain of the Singh entities earned and the wages he paid his workers, thereby lowering significantly the federal taxes he and his businesses owed and paid.
Specifically, for tax years 2009 and 2012, Singh allegedly failed to report approximately $10,000,000 in gross receipts for seven Singh entities. To facilitate this fraud, Singh employed an individual who, at Singh’s direction, did not record the seven Singh entities’ cash sales as gross receipts in the books and records of those businesses.
In addition, from 2010 through 2014, Singh allegedly concealed approximately $7,091,331 of wages paid to employees of the same Singh entities, plus an additional Singh entity, fraudulently depriving the federal government of payroll taxes.
Singh accomplished this scheme by paying a significant portion of the wages paid to employees of these entities “off the books.â€
By under-reporting employee hours and even concealing the existence of some employees, Singh caused his payroll processing companies to underreport the employee wages.
The indictment also alleges that between October 2012 and January 2015, Singh fraudulently obtained federal disaster relief funds by preparing and filing false and fraudulent documents and invoices with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
These documents claimed that the Singh entity, “The Water’s Edge,†which operated a restaurant in Long Island City, New York, suffered losses following Hurricane Sandy. The invoices inflated the amount of losses, often by double or triple the actual amount.
Singh also submitted or caused to be submitted to FEMA fraudulent receipts from vendors that inflated the value of the contents of the building that housed the restaurant. As a result, Singh fraudulently received approximately $950,000 in disaster relief funds from FEMA.
Singh faces terms of imprisonment of up to o 20 years for each honest services wire fraud charge and up to 10 years for the federal program bribery charge, both in connection with the Town loan scheme.
Singh further faces terms of imprisonment of up to 30 years for the disaster relief fraud charge and up to five years for conspiring to defraud the United States in connection with his submitted claims for disaster relief.