A Yonkers contractor has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for evading taxes on income of $1.5 million that he concealed from the IRS for several years.
U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román also ordered Mario G. Nunes to pay $352,328 in restitution to the government for the taxes he should have paid from 2014 to 2019.
Nunes had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and six counts of filing false tax returns. He was sentenced on May 4 but the judgment was not entered on the public docket until July 5.
Nunes, 60, was born in Portugal and emigrated to the United States in 1990, according to court records.
He settled in Yonkers and established himself as a self-employed masonry and concrete contractor around 1992 or 1993. In 2018, he became a naturalized citizen.
The IRS originally assessed $85,692 for unpaid taxes from 2006 to 2017, based on the income he reported. But there was more. The government discovered that he had also concealed income from his business, booking more than $1.8 million from 2012 to 2016 but reporting less than $237,000.
Nunes employed several schemes to conceal income. He asked customers to pay him in cash, for example, or to pay vendors directly for supplies. He paid for personal expenses from his business accounts and he deposited business checks into his personal account.
In 2018, he called the IRS and claimed he had not worked since an accident in 2015, according to the criminal complaint, and that he was surviving on borrowed money from family and friends.
Non-mandatory federal sentencing guidelines called for 18 to 24 months in prison. The federal probation office recommended six months.
Nunes”™ attorney, Paul D”™Emilia, recommended no jail time, three years of probation, a fine and community service.
“There is no excuse for Mr. Nunes”™ conduct,” D”™Emilia stated in a letter to Román, “but we believe the court will see that his actions in this instance are incongruent with the rest of his life.”
He depicted Nunes as a good man who “always strived to do the right thing” and who is humbled and embarrassed by his failures. He was raised in poverty in Portugal, never married, lives in a modest one-bedroom apartment, and is focused on his community.
He created Fundación Galaxia Inc. in the Dominican Republic to provide toys, food, and medicine to children and the elderly.
A prison sentence would be unreasonable, D”™Emilia wrote, “considering Mr. Nunes”™ life history, long record of good works, stellar character, and the need to be present in the lives of his community and for the ongoing survival of his business.”
Nunes said he never intended to avoid taxes, in a letter to the judge, but he found himself “struggling at the end of every project to make ends meet. I now realize that it was a combination of underpricing and miss-management that left me broke at the end of these endeavors.”
Assistant federal prosecutors Jeffrey C. Coffman and James F. McMahon recommended a sentence within the 18 to 24 month guidelines to “send a message to would-be tax cheats that a meaningful jail term is the likely consequence of such criminal conduct.”
Minimal jail time, they stated in a letter to Román, “would be perceived by the public as a slap on the wrist and would fail to provide adequate deterrence to others who would flout the tax laws.”
Nunes had taken the position that had he filed tax returns correctly, including all expenses, he would have owed little or no taxes.
The prosecutors scoffed at the assertion. Nunes had received more than $1.8 million in documented receipts but also received cash receipts that the government was unable to identify. He paid his employees in cash but failed to pay their employment taxes.
Nunes”™ tax evasion “was not a one-time mistake or fleeting lapse of judgment,” Coffman and McMahon stated. “Rather, time and time again over the course of over five years, Nunes made a conscious and deliberate choice to defraud the U.S. government.”
