NJ cleaner receives sentence for federal
income tax evasion
In May, a drycleaner resident of
Clifton, NJ, was sentenced to a year and a day of prison time
after pleading guilty in a federal income tax evasion case.
Stephen Schwartz, owner of Saveway
Cleaners & Tailors, was also given three years of probation
and ordered to pay $40,000 in fines by Judge Garrett E. Brown
in federal court in Trenton, according to Al Drucker, a
spokesman for the Criminal Division of the Internal Revenue
Service in New Jersey.
It is expected that Schwartz will
serve about ten months in a minimum security facility.
Schwartz’s lawyer, Miles R. Feinstein, told a reporter
from The Herald News that his client will retain ownership of
the drycleaning store located at 947 Allwood Road during that
period of time.
Court documents cited that Schwartz
had failed to pay taxes on more than $1.3 million of income
between 1997 and 2001 altogether.
Federal authorities also claimed in
court that Schwartz had funneled some cash from his drycleaning
business into a personal bank account that he used to write
personal checks totaling over $1 million for items such as
country club fees and home repair expenses.
Facing up to five counts of tax
evasion — and a maximum five-year sentence for each
— Schwartz plead guilty in July of 2004 for failing to
pay $103,692 in taxes on $361,040 of income he earned in 2000.
As part of a plea bargain
agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop the counts of federal
income tax evasion stemming from years 1997 through 1999, as
well as 2001.
In those four years, Schwartz
failed to report more than $950,000 in income — which
would have carried taxes of more than $320,000 —
according to documents filed in court.
Feinstein noted that the leniency
of the sentence was partly due to the fact that his client had
readily paid all of the taxes he owed, including all interest
and penalties accrued
According to Feinstein,
Schwartz’s lack of criminal history and his cooperation
with authorities also helped reduce his sentence.
“He's an outstanding man with
an absolutely unblemished past,” Feinstein said.
“He’s a hardworking and self-made man. He made one
mistake and took responsibility for it immediately.”
MAC offers free online registration for
Oct. show
Those who plan to attend the MidAtlantic
Association of Cleaners’ CleaningExpo
Live — but do not want to wait in long lines on opening
day — can take advantage of free registration online at
www.cleaningexpo.com and midatlanticassociation.org.
The show, which will be held from
Oct. 28-30 at Dulles Expo and Conference Center in Virginia, is
utilizing SpeedBadge to simply and speed up the registration
process. As an added incentive, everybody who registers on line
and attends is automatically entered to win a wide-screen HDTV.
Show hours will run from 4 to 8
p.m. on Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. on Sunday.
More information is available at www.cleaningexpo.com or by calling David Norford at (540) 775-2525.
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