FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 18, 2009
WWW.USDOJ.GOV/USAO/MA
CONTACT: CHRISTINA DiIORIO-STERLING
E-MAIL: USAMA.MEDIA@USDOJ.GOV
CONTRACTORS SENTENCED FOR DEFRAUDING UNITED STATES
BOSTON, MA - Two North Adams brothers were sentenced today in federal court for Conspiring to Defraud the United States by Impairing and Impeding the Internal Revenue Service.
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and Susan Dukes, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation - Boston Field Office, announced today that SCOTT FARRINGTON, age 34, and MARK FARRINGTON, age 35, both of Adams, were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor to three years probation, with restitution in the amount of $64,233.00 ordered for each defendant. The FARRINGTONS pled guilty to conspiracy to impair and impede the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) on July 30, 2009.
At the earlier plea hearing, the prosecutor told the Court that had the case proceeded to trial the Government’s evidence would have proven that from approximately September of 2003 through March of 2007, MARK FARRINGTON and SCOTT FARRINGTON co-owned and co-managed Farrington Contracting. Farrington Contracting was a home renovation business in North Adams, Massachusetts, that was organized as a general partnership of which each was a fifty percent owner. At the time the partnership was formed, MARK FARRINGTON and SCOTT FARRINGTON agreed to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful government function of the IRS in assessing and collecting income tax. Specifically, MARK FARRINGTON and SCOTT FARRINGTON agreed to conceal their income from the IRS, by paying themselves and their workers in currency and then failing to report those transactions to the IRS on timely partnership income tax returns, individual income tax returns and Forms 1099.
They further concealed their income by filing only one Form W-2 for the 2003 tax year, failing to file Forms W-2 for their other workers in that year and for all workers in all other tax years, and by failing to file Forms 941 after the third quarter of 2004. MARK FARRINGTON and SCOTT FARRINGTON further concealed their income from the IRS by affirmatively evading the assessment of tax on their partnership and individual income, by structuring their currency transactions in a manner that would avoid creating currency transaction reports to the IRS and by making material misrepresentations to the IRS.
The case was investigated by the IRS-Criminal Investigations Division. It was prosecuted by Department of Justice’s Tax Divisions Trial Attorney Jill Cassera and Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Hart Smyth of Ortiz’s Springfield Branch Office.
###