TRENTON, N.J. – A Monmouth County man was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for evading more than $2.3 million in personal and corporate income taxes between 2002 and 2011, and in 2015, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced.
Officials say Tito Viteri, 41, of Cream Ridge, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before Chief U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson to an information charging him with one count of tax evasion.
Judge Wolfson imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Since 2002, Viteri was the owner and operator of numerous commercial trucking companies that performed delivery services.
Between 2002 and 2011, and in 2015, Viteri evaded the payment of more than $2 million in personal and business-related taxes by:
• “pyramiding” companies and using nominees as the purported owners of several of the companies in order to shield business assets while incurring employment tax liabilities;
• failing to file timely and accurate quarterly federal tax returns by falsely categorizing employees as independent contractors, for whom employment taxes did not have to be paid;
• receiving unreported kickback income from an employee;
• concealing personal income and assets by using nominees, and depositing substantial amounts of income into nominee bank accounts and failing to report that income on his personal tax returns.
In 2008, an IRS audit determined that Viteri owed approximately $785,000 in unpaid taxes for one of his companies, and that he himself owed approximately $315,000 in unpaid personal income taxes.
Although Viteri began making payments to the IRS in August 2011, he stopped making those payments in December 2013, claiming he was not “bringing enough money home.”
Despite his claims, from February 2013 to February 2016 Viteri made approximately $111,000 in rental payments (approximately $3,000 per month) for a property in Chesterfield.
In 2016, although he still had substantial outstanding tax liabilities, Viteri purchased a home in Cream Ridge for more than $920,000.
To conceal from the IRS the source of the funds used to purchase the home, Viteri arranged for the home to be purchased in his mother’s name.
In addition to the prison term, Chief Judge Wolfson sentenced Viteri to two years of supervised release.