December 4, 2003
For Immediate Release
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Edward H. Kubo, Jr., United States Attorney for the District of Hawaii, announced that YIU WING WONG, aka Wayne Wong, entered a plea of guilty yesterday to a one-count Information charging him with willfully assisting in the preparation of a materially false corporate tax return of Geolabs, Inc. for the tax year 1997. Wong is scheduled to be sentenced before United States District Court Judge Helen Gillmor on March 28, 2004.
According to the plea agreement between Wong and the United States, Wong was employed a Geolab's chief accountant and was responsible for assisting in Geolab's corporate tax returns for the years 1997-2000. During 1997, various Geolabs employees were requested to make political contributions to specific candidates for political office. The employees were then told, often by Wong, that Geolabs would reimburse the employees in an amount equal to the contributions made by them. Wong, after making these reimbursement payments to the employees, reflected the reimbursements as a deductible corporate expense on the corporate books. In fact, the payment of political contributions is not a deductible expense on federal tax returns.
Wong then caused the false entries in the corporate books to be provided to Geolab's tax preparer. These false entries were then treated on the 1997 tax return as a deductible expense. For the tax year 1997, Wong caused political contribution reimbursements totaling approximately $13,000 to be falsely reported on the tax return.
Wong faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The length of any term of imprisonment actually imposed in determined by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
This case was a result of an investigation by Criminal Investigation of the Internal Revenue Service. The prosecution is being handled by Assistant United States Attorney J. Michael Seabright.
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