News from New York State Department of Taxation and Finance

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Manhattan Restaurateur Pleads Guilty To Stealing $1.1 Million In Tax Revenue

Faces Jail Sentence and Full Restitution

ALBANY, NY (12/11/2007; 1651)(readMedia)-- Acting New York State Commissioner of Taxation and Finance Barbara G. Billet announced today that Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau obtained felony convictions against the owner of several Manhattan restaurants for the theft of more than $1.1 million in sales, payroll and non-resident personal income taxes.

Eric Tevrow, 51, of 34 Hillside Avenue, West Orange, New Jersey, is the owner of Fresh restaurant, located at 105 Reade Street in lower Manhattan, as well as the former owner of Shore restaurant, located at 41 Murray Street, and Coast restaurant, located at 100 Liberty Street. Tevrow pled guilty on December 7, 2007 to Grand Larceny in the 2nd Degree for failure to remit sales tax collected at his restaurants between December 1, 2002 and August 31, 2007 in the amount of $979,759. Tevrow also pled guilty to Grand Larceny in the 3rd Degree for withholding payroll tax in the amount of $18,782 from employee paychecks and failing to remit it to the State of New York.

As part of his plea agreement, Tevrow also acknowledged that he is responsible for substantial interest and penalties owed to the Department for these evaded tax liabilities.

The investigation began after Department auditors compared bank records of credit card transactions conducted in defendant’s restaurants with the defendant’s sales returns and discovered that the defendant had only reported a small fraction of the sales that had been paid by customer’s using credit cards. Following its investigation, the Department referred the matter to the District Attorney for prosecution.

Acting Commissioner Billet said, “As part of our increased efforts to expose tax cheats, the Department has begun examining all sorts of financial data, including data obtained from third party sources, to prove that taxpayers are cheating the system. These efforts, when coupled with our substantial increase in fraud fighting staff, demonstrate that we are taking a hard-line approach on tax fraud, especially when it comes to dishonest business owners who collect and fail to remit sales and withholding taxes. These tax cheats illegally pad their pockets while cheating their customers and employees and putting honest competitors at an unfair financial disadvantage. We applaud District Attorney Morgenthau for aggressively prosecuting these cases. Tax fraud is a serious offense which carries serious consequences.”

For additional information on this case, please refer to the Manhattan DA’s press release which can be found at: http://www.manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2007-12-10.shtml

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