Date: March 19, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov MIAMI — On March 18, the operator of several Key West, Florida, labor staffing companies – including PSEB Specialty Service Inc., Perfect Service Excellent Benefits Services Inc., Starline Hospitality Inc., Norbert Janitorial Service Inc., E.S.F. Services Inc. and Expert Services F.S. Inc. – was sentenced to four years in prison for tax and immigration-related crimes. According to court documents and statements made in court, at various times between January 2011 and January 2021, Petr Sutka and others helped run a series of labor staffing companies that facilitated the employment in hotels, bars and restaurants in Key West and elsewhere of non-resident aliens who were not authorized to work in the United States. These labor staffing companies did not withhold federal income taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes from these workers’ wages and did not report the wages to the IRS. In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Jose E. Martinez ordered Sutka to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $3,551,423.84 in restitution to the United States. Sutka’s co-conspirators Vasil Khatiashvili and Zdenek Strnad are scheduled to be sentenced on April 22. U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, Special Agent in Charge Matthew D. Line of the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI), Miami Field Office, and Special Agent in Charge Anthony Salisbury of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Miami made the announcement. CI Miami Field Office and HSI Miami investigated the case. Senior Litigation Counsel Christopher J. Clark, Senior Litigation Counsel Sean Beaty and Trial Attorneys Jessica A. Kraft, Nicholas J. Schilling, Jr., Matthew C. Hicks and Wilson Rae Stamm of the Justice Department’s Tax Division prosecuted the case. 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.
