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.
