TRENTON – George Gilmore, a partner at an Ocean County law firm, was sentenced today to one year and one day in prison for his conviction on two counts of failing to pay over payroll taxes withheld from employees to the IRS and one count of making false statements on a bank loan application submitted to Ocean First Bank N.A., First Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig announced.
Officials say, on April 17, 2019, Gilmore, 70, of Toms River, was acquitted of two counts of filing false tax returns for calendar years 2013 and 2014; the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on one count of income tax evasion for calendar years 2013, 2014, and 2015.
The verdicts were returned following a trial that began April 1, 2019,
before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson, who imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and the evidence at trial:
Gilmore worked as an equity partner and shareholder at Gilmore & Monahan P.A., a law firm in Toms River, where he exercised primary control over the firm’s financial affairs.
Because he exercised significant control over the law firm’s financial affairs, Gilmore was responsible for withholding payroll taxes from the gross salary and wages of the law firm’s employees to cover individual income, Social Security, and Medicare tax obligations.
For the tax quarters ending March 31, 2016, and June 30, 2016, the law firm withheld tax payments from its employees’ checks, but Gilmore failed to pay over in full the payroll taxes due to the IRS.
Gilmore also submitted a loan application to Ocean First Bank containing false statements. On November 21, 2014, Gilmore reviewed, signed, and submitted to Ocean First Bank a Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA) to obtain refinancing of a mortgage loan for $1.5 million with a “cash-out” provision that provided Gilmore would obtain cash from the loan.
On January 22, 2015, Gilmore submitted another URLA updating the initial application. Gilmore failed to disclose his outstanding 2013 tax liabilities and personal loans that he had obtained from others on the URLAs. Gilmore received $572,000 from the cash-out portion of the loan, according to officials.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Thompson sentenced Gilmore to three years of supervised release.