SCAFFOLDING CORP. PRESIDENT PLEADS GUILTY TO $1M TAX FRAUD; WILL PAY $2M IN BACK TAXES AND FEES, SERVE JAIL TIME

Three-Year Investigation By Bronx DA’s Office and NYC Department of Finance 

  Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that the president of two scaffolding corporations has pleaded guilty to Criminal Tax Fraud and will pay over $2 million in taxes and penalties and serve 16 weekends in jail for underreporting millions of dollars in income of his Bronx-based businesses. 

  District Attorney Clark said, “This defendant used a check-cashing scheme to avoid paying nearly $1 million dollars in taxes on income from city, state and private contracts. Together with the New York City Department of Finance, we investigated this case and the defendant pleaded guilty to felony charges and will pay $2 million to city and state coffers. Such disregard of the law is a slap in the face of hardworking taxpayers.” 

  New York City Department of Finance Commissioner Jacques Jiha said, “This conviction is the result of our ongoing investigation into tax crimes that eventually impact the many New York City businesses that are law abiding. I want to thank our Tax Enforcement unit as well as our partners at the Bronx D.A. for their hard work and dedication, and I hope this serves as a strong deterrent to those who look for ways to skirt the law.” 

  District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Prabhjit Singh, 36, president of Rock Scaffolding Corporation and M.S.S. Sidewalk, Bridging and Scaffolding Corporation, pleaded guilty today before Bronx Supreme Court Justice John Carter to two counts of fourth-degree City Criminal Tax Fraud. As part of his plea, he will pay $2 million and will be sentenced on February 3, 2017, to serve weekends in jail for four months. 

  

  District Attorney Clark said that, according to the investigation, since 2008, the corporations avoided paying taxes by either not filing returns, or filing returns with understated income. The income was hidden by cashing checks payable to the firm at check-cashing outlets, instead of depositing them into the firms’ bank accounts where the funds would be reported. 

  The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney W. Dyer Halpern, Director of the Tax and Organizational Fraud Unit, under the supervision of William Zelenka, Chief of the Economic Crimes Bureau, and under the overall supervision of Stuart Levy, Deputy Chief of the Investigations Division and Jean T. Walsh, Chief of the Investigations Division. 

   District Attorney Clark thanked Lieutenant Frankie Brumfield and former Detective Investigator Marie D’Angelo of the Bronx District Attorney’s Detective Investigators for their work on the case.