Date: Nov. 26, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Rochester, NY — U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Anthony Carnevale of North Chili, NY, pleaded guilty before Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford to filing a false tax return, which carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Assistant U.S. Attorney Katelyn M. Hartford, who is handling the case, stated that Carnevale, owner of VIP Maintenance Inc. DBA College Bound Sealers, a paving and sealing business, failed to report over $3,000,000 in revenue to the IRS between 2017 and 2021. From the total amount of $3,000,580.33 received from customer checks cashed, Carnevale paid fees to a check cashing business totaling $63,564.19, paid business expenses totaling $62,391.00, and then paid VIP Maintenance Inc.’s employees some of or all their wages in cash totaling $2,143,504.75. The remaining amount of cash received from the checks cashed, $731,120.39, was kept by Carnevale. This resulted in $171,217.00 in unpaid personal income taxes, and $327,956.23 in unpaid payroll taxes. The plea is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), under the direction of Thomas Fattorusso, Special Agent-in-Charge, New York Field Division. Sentencing is set for March 18, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. before Judge Wolford. 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.
