Owner of Chelsea Painting Business Charged With Tax Evasion and COVID-19 Loan Fraud

BOSTON – The owner of a painting company in Chelsea has been arrested and charged in connection with a five-year scheme to evade over $2.3 million in federal income taxes and with fraudulently obtaining $377,500 in COVID-19 loans.

Helcio Sperandio, 52, of Chelsea, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Boston on charges of filing false tax returns, tax evasion and wire fraud. The defendant was arrested today and will make an initial appearance in federal court in Boston at 2 p.m. this afternoon.

According to the charging document, Sperandio owned and operated Aquarelle Painting & Services (Aquarelle). It is alleged that, from 2018 through at least 2022, Sperandio cashed hundreds of customer payment checks instead of depositing them into his business bank accounts. When tax time came, Sperandio allegedly gave his tax preparer Aquarelle’s bank statements, but he did not disclose information about the payment checks that he cashed. Using this information, the preparer filed Sperandio’s corporate and individual tax returns, unwittingly underreporting Sperandio’s income and allowing him to evade $2,309,466 in federal income tax.

It is further alleged that when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Sperandio obtained a $150,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) from the Small Business Administration (SBA) by providing false revenue numbers and falsely certifying that he was not engaged in any illegal activity, even though he was activity defrauding the U.S. Treasury. Later, Sperandio allegedly obtained an additional $277,500 from the SBA as a loan increase and used some of the money to start a new real estate company, a purpose prohibited under the EIDL program.

The charge of filing a false tax return provides for a sentence of up to three years in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of tax evasion provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of wire fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000, or twice the monetary gain or loss, whichever is more, restitution and forfeiture. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Thomas Demeo, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Boston Field Office; and Ketty Larco-Ward, Inspector in Charge of the Boston Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kriss Basil Deputy Chief of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit is prosecuting the case.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus and https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus/combatingfraud.

Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline via the NCDF Web Complaint Form.

The details contained in the charging document are allegations. The defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law.