Co-owner of Orange Village company pleads guilty to tax charges

The co-owner of a sewage and plumbing business in Oakwood Village pleaded guilty this week to tax charges, law enforcement officials said.

Remo DiFranco is scheduled to be sentenced on June 16. He pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud the IRS.

DiFranco, along with two other people and the company where he worked, conspired between 2007 and 2012. DiFranco and other employees prepared checks to a company for specific amounts and falsely classified the payments as rent and material expenses. DiFranco and another executive signed and filed tax returns for years 2007 through 2011 knowing the tax returns understated the company’s income and overstated its expenses, according to court documents.

“Conspiring to impede the IRS by creating business checks for expenses that were not incurred and receiving a kickback from those fraudulent business checks is not tax savings, but rather a recipe for criminal prosecution,” said Kathy A. Enstrom, Special Agent in Charge, IRS Criminal Investigation, Cincinnati Field Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Antoinette Bacon following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations.