Gross
Friedman
GOSHEN – Three concrete companies have pled guilty in Orange County Court to the felony of criminal tax fraud for having collected state sales tax, which they failed to remit to the state Department of Taxation and Finance.
As part of the plea agreement placed on the record at the time the corporations pled guilty, each repaid all of the delinquent sales tax – Concrete on Demand, Inc. repaid $335,637; Copour, Inc. repaid $318,662; and CoMix, Inc. repaid $126,342. The total repaid was $780,642.
On December 11, two high management agents of the corporations had pled guilty in Monroe Town Court to tax crimes in connection with the failure to remit sales tax. David Gross, 45, of Kiryas Joel, a high managerial agent of Concrete on Demand, Inc., and David Friedman, 43, of Kiryas Joel, a high managerial agent of Copour and CoMix, each pled guilty to criminal tax fraud. Both were sentenced to three-year conditional discharges contingent on them paying full restitution by December 21.
On March 9, Orange County District Attorney’s Office criminal investigators, State Police, Town of Blooming Grove Police and criminal investigators from the state Department of Taxation and Finance’s criminal investigation Division executed search warrants related to the three companies at three locations in Orange County and two in Rockland County.
“The theft of taxpayer money is something that simply cannot be tolerated,” said Orange County DA David Hoovler. “Many do not realize that approximately half of the sales tax collected by merchants is returned to the county where the sales occurred,” he noted. The DA said in December alone, over $1 million in sales tax that should have been remitted to the state was collected by his office in conjunction with the state tax department.
