Date: October 3, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A former housekeeping manager at a large Key West hotel, Nataliya Vasylivna Kasyanenko, was sentenced on Sept. 29, to eight months in prison for conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring to harbor aliens and induce them to remain in the United States for her role in a tax and immigration conspiracy related to the operation of a labor staffing business, Phoenix ADB Services, Inc. ("Phoenix ADB"). From at least 2009 to October 2020, a large hotel in Key West used staffing services provided by several companies, including General Labor Solutions LLC, Liberty Specialty Services LLC, Paradise Choice LLC and Paradise Choice Cleaning LLC (collectively, "Paradise Choice"), AmeriHos LLC ("American Hospitality"), Golden Sands Management LLC ("Golden Sands"). and Phoenix ADB (collectively, "hospitality labor staffing companies"). As a manager, Kasyanenko used these companies to hire aliens for positions at her hotel whom she knew were not authorized to work in the United States and received kickbacks from the hospitality labor staffing companies for directing unauthorized workers to be placed on their respective payrolls. Kasyanenko knew that the operators of Phoenix ADB—who included her sons, former City of Key West police officer Igor Kasyanenko and Roman Riabov—paid workers without withholding federal income or employment taxes from their gross wages and did not file with the IRS requisite tax forms for such workers employed at hotels, bars, and restaurants in Key West and at other locations in Florida. In a series of prior cases filed in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, operators of the hospitality labor staffing companies have been convicted and sentenced to prison for facilitating the employment of unauthorized workers in the Key West hospitality industry and violating the employment tax laws. Mykhaylo Chugay, one of the operators of General Labor Solutions LLC, Liberty Specialty Services LLC, and Paradise Choice Cleaning LLC, was convicted at trial in June 2022, and sentenced to 292 months in prison. Two of Chugay's coconspirators, Oleksandr Morgunov and Volodymyr Ogorodnychuk, each pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 96 months and 48 months in prison, respectively. Batyr Myatiev, the owner and operator of American Hospitality and Golden Sands, pleaded guilty in March 2023 and was sentenced to 32 months in prison. In March 2022, Mikus Berzins, Igor Kasyanenko, Riabov, and Andrejs Kozlovs each pleaded guilty, acknowledging their respective roles in the operation of Phoenix ADB. Igor Kasyanenko and Riabov were sentenced to 22 months and 18 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in the same conspiracy to which Nataliya Kasyanenko pleaded guilty in this case. Mikus Berzins and Andrejs Kozlovs were sentenced to 28 months and 12 months in prison, respectively, for knowingly hiring ten or more aliens who were not authorized to work in the United States. In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham ordered Nataliya Kasyanenko to serve two years of supervised release and to pay approximately $1.09 million in restitution to the United States. U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department's Tax Division, Special Agent in Charge Matthew D. Line of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Miami Field Office, and Special Agent in Charge Anthony Salisbury of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Miami, announced the sentence. IRS-CI Miami and HSI Miami investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Clark, Senior Litigation Counsel Sean Beaty and Trial Attorneys Jessica A. Kraft, Nicholas J. Schilling Jr., Matthew C. Hicks and Wilson Rae Stamm of the Tax Division prosecuted the case.
