Date: April 5, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Trenton, NJ — An Ocean County man was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for failing to pay over $10 million in payroll taxes stemming from his ownership of several businesses, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced. Josef Neuman of Lakewood, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp to an information charging him with willful failure to pay over payroll taxes for one of his businesses in 2018. Judge Shipp imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court. According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court: Neuman was chief executive officer of a business in Lakewood. The company provided administrative services to operators of nursing homes and other health care facilities, including at least approximately 20 entities co-owned and operated by Neuman. As a person who controlled the companies’ financial affairs, Neuman had the responsibility to collect, truthfully account for, and pay over to the IRS the companies’ payroll taxes. During tax years 2017 and 2018, Neuman failed to pay over to the IRS over $10 million in payroll taxes owed by the companies. Neuman knew that payroll taxes were due and owing to the IRS at this time, but continued to pay other business expenses and employee salaries, instead of the unpaid taxes, while tax liabilities continued to accrue. In addition to the prison term, Judge Shipp sentenced Neuman to two years of supervised release and ordered restitution of $11.2 million. U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation (CI), under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan, with the investigation leading to the guilty plea. The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Romano of the Health Care Fraud Unit in Newark. 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. 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.
