Date: May 30, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for falsely overstating in personal tax returns the amount of his business expenses and charitable contributions. A federal jury earlier this year convicted Nikko D'Ambrosio, of Des Plaines, Ill., of making false statements in his personal income tax returns for the tax years 2019 and 2020. D’Ambrosio, who worked as a salesperson for an Illinois-based electronic sweepstakes kiosk operator, falsely claimed to have driven more than 474,000 miles on business-related travel for those two years. He also falsely claimed to have incurred more than $263,000 in business-related meal expenses during those years. D’Ambrosio’s false claims about his charitable contributions involved alleged donations of more than $63,000 to a Catholic church in Chicago. Financial and vehicle records presented at trial revealed that the mileage and meal expenses were vastly overstated, and a church representative testified that D’Ambrosio was not a parishioner and that the church had no record of any donations by D’Ambrosio in those years. U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin imposed the year-and-a-day sentence during a hearing Wednesday in federal court in Chicago. The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Jason Bushey, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation in Chicago, and Robert W. “Wes” Wheeler, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Richard M. Rothblatt and Brandon D. Stone.
