Date: Nov. 27, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that Evan Bobzin of Chester, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley in Bridgeport to 24 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for theft and tax offenses stemming from a $2 million embezzlement scheme. According to court documents and statements made in court, from July 2013 until December 2023, Bobzin was an employee of Hoffman’s Gun Center (“Hoffman’s”) in Newington and, in 2016, he became the head of information technology at Hoffman’s. In January 2016, Bobzin began to steal cash receipts from a safe in Hoffman’s front office. Bobzin would arrive at work before other employees, disconnect ethernet cables from the company’s computers servers to cameras that captured views of the safe, enter the front office, open the safe, steal thousands of dollars in cash from receipt pouches, return the pouches to the safe, and then reconnect the ethernet cables. He would then deposit some of all of the cash proceeds into his personal bank accounts. Between 2016 and 2023, Bobzin and his former spouse made 287 cash deposits of stolen money from Hoffman’s totaling $1,901,250 into his bank accounts, and seven cash purchases of cashier’s checks totaling $161,330. In October 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office notified Bobzin that he was conducting cash transactions in amounts below $10,000 in a manner indicative of structuring to avoid having his bank file Currency Transaction Reports. Bobzin ceased making cash deposits at his bank, opened new accounts at a different bank, and resumed making structured cash deposits into those accounts. Bobzin failed to report the stolen income on his federal personal income tax returns for the 2016 through 2022 tax years, resulting in a loss to the IRS of $436,178. For example, on his income tax return for the 2020 tax year, Bobzin reported taxable income of $9,914 and tax owed of $0. The return omitted income of approximately $432,615 and understated tax due and owing by approximately $110,530. On Aug. 29, 2024, Bobzin pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of stolen money and tax evasion. Judge Dooley ordered Bobzin to pay restitution of $2,062,580 and to cooperate with the IRS to pay $436,178 in taxes, as well as penalties and interest. Bobzin, who is released on a $50,000 bond, is required to report to prison on January 6. This investigation was conducted by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher W. Schmeisser. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
