Instead of depositing business checks for $8.8 million into company accounts, cleaning contractor Marco A. Flores used a check cashing businesses to take the payments as personal income and dodge his federal tax obligations.
Flores, 50, of Amawalk, near Yorktown Heights, was charged with tax evasion on July 31 in U.S. District Court in White Plains. He entered a guilty plea in a deal with the government.
Flores owned and operated RCCK Inc., of Yonkers, and RCEK Inc., of Mount Kisco, and has also operated companies under the Clean Image and RCKlean names.
From 2016 to 2020, Flores provided cleaning services to hotels and restaurants, mostly in Manhattan, such as the Hard Rock Cafe, Ruby Tuesday and Union Square Cafe. His companies did the overnight cleaning and were paid with checks.
Flores cashed many of the checks at a Bronx check cashing business, paying about $175,000 in fees and keeping more than $8.6 million.
“I then used the cash to operate my business and pay myself income,” he told U.S. Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznik in a plea allocution hearing.
What he did not do, he told the judge, was tell his accountant about his business revenue and its impact on his personal income.
His companies were organized as S corporations, where business income is transferred to a shareholder’s personal tax returns.
“Flores falsely told the tax preparer that for some years RCCK Inc. and RCEK Inc. had no gross receipts,” the government’s charging document states, “or for other years provided the tax preparer with bank statements for those entities that did not disclose the more than $8.8 million in cashed checks.”
Flores reported taxable income of $613,131 from 2016 to 2020, according to the charging document, but should have reported more than $5.4 million. He reported only 2.4% of the taxes due — $45,754 instead of $1,927,180.
Details of his plea deal were not disclosed during the July 31 hearing. But Flores said he understood that the maximum sentence for tax evasion is five years in prison plus three years of supervised release, a fine of twice the amount of his pecuniary gain, and restitution.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James McMahon said the government contends that the loss is more than $2.1 million.
Flores was released from custody on posting a $200,000 personal recognizance bond.
Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7 before U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román.
