Date: August 2, 2024

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Rochester, NY — U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Jeffrey Tome of Rochester, NY, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr. 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 Richard A. Resnick, who is handling the case, stated that Tome owns Tome Enterprises Inc., which provides gutter repair and installation services in Rochester. For the tax years 2017 through 2021, Tome failed to deposit approximately 1,679 customer checks totaling $1,719,283.45 into Tome Enterprises Inc.’s business bank account, instead, cashing the checks at a local check cashing business. Tome then intentionally failed to advise the business’s tax return preparer of the money that was received from cashing the business checks, resulting in the $1,719,283.45 not being reported on the business’s corporate income tax returns. In addition, Tome failed to include the net profits from the corporation as income on his personal federal income tax returns, which resulted in Tome failing to pay personal income taxes totaling $330,137. Also, Tome paid his employees $407,573.60 in cash, which represented wages for which payroll taxes should have been paid. The payroll taxes that Tome failed to pay totaled $62,358.76.

The plea is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS CI), under the direction of Special Agent-in-Charge Thomas Fattorusso.

Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 11, 2024, at 2 p.m. before Judge Geraci.

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.