Date: September 7, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Nezir "Nick" Boljevic, of Broome County, New York, was sentenced today in federal court in Utica to 12 months and 1 day in prison after previously pleading guilty to one felony count of willful failure to pay federal payroll taxes, announced United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Thomas Fattorusso, Executive Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI), New York Field Office. In his guilty plea, Boljevic admitted that from 2007 through 2017, while he owned and operated Vestal Diner in Vestal, New York, he failed to make payroll tax payments to the government with respect to his employees, including for Social Security and Medicare taxes. Boljevic withheld the payroll taxes from his employees' paychecks but did not report the withholdings or turn the money over to the Internal Revenue Service. To avoid IRS collection efforts, Boljevic repeatedly put Vestal Diner in the names of a series of nominee owners with different Employer Identification Numbers for tax purposes, even though Boljevic remained the true owner and operator of Vestal Diner. In total, Boljevic failed to pay approximately $322,516.51 in payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service between 2007 and 2017. Boljevic no longer owns or operates Vestal Diner. The defendant will serve a three-year term of supervised release after he completes his prison sentence, and he was ordered to pay $322,516.51 in restitution to the IRS. This case was investigated by Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI), and it was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael F. Perry and former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Beaty.
