Date: December 20, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Alan Laird and Steven Rosenbaum, both of Webster, NY, who were convicted of filing a false tax return with the Internal Revenue Service, were each sentenced to serve six months in prison followed by six months home confinement by Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford. In addition, Laird and Rosenbaum were ordered to pay restitution to the IRS in the amounts of $632,722 and $559,898, respectively. At the time of the offense, Laird was Chief of the Irondequoit, NY, Police Department. Rosenbaum is a former police officer with the Irondequoit Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard A. Resnick, who is handling the case, stated that Laird and Rosenbaum owned Swoop1, Inc., a security business that provided security personnel to various high schools, colleges, businesses, and performing arts venues in the greater Rochester area. For the years 2016 through 2021, Laird and Rosenbaum failed to report on Swoop1's corporate income tax returns gross receipts totaling $5,598,354. These receipts derived primarily from the defendants cashing hundreds of Swoop1's client's checks at a local check cashing company, rather than depositing the checks into Swoop1's business bank account. Then, from the more than $5.5 million in cash received from the cashed checks, Laird and Rosenbaum used $2,675,467 to pay hundreds of Swoop1's employees their wages in cash. As a result of paying Swoop1's employees in cash, the defendants caused Swoop1 to fail to pay $204,673 in payroll taxes to the IRS. The remaining amount of the cash received from the more than $5.5 million in cashed checks that was not paid to Swoop1's employees was split by the defendants and subsequently not reported by the defendants on their personal income tax returns. By each failing to report the more than $1.3 million in cash they received from the cashed checks, the defendants failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal income taxes to the IRS. The sentencings are the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division, under the direction of Thomas Fattorusso, Special Agent-in-Charge.
