Owner of Michigan Payroll Companies Pleads Guilty to Employment Tax Fraud

A resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan, pleaded guilty today to willfully failing to pay over employment taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

According to documents and information provided to the court, Dino Rotondo owned and operated four professional employer organizations (PEOs) located in Troy, Michigan, which provided payroll-related services to client companies.  Rotondo processed payroll and agreed to withhold from client employee paychecks, and send to the IRS, the employment taxes that were due.   Despite this obligation, Rotondo did not pay to the IRS employment tax withholdings that his PEOs collected during 2012 and the first quarter of 2013.

Rotondo also admitted that he did not pay to the IRS employment taxes due for an additional business that he owned.  In total, Rotondo did not pay more than $1.5 million in employment taxes owed to the IRS.   

U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman scheduled sentencing for Jan. 18, 2019.  Rotondo faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison.  He also faces a period of supervised release, restitution, and monetary penalties. 

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman thanked special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation, who conducted the investigation, and Tax Division Trial Attorneys Abigail Burger Chingos and Jeffrey Bender, who are prosecuting the case. 

Additional information about the Tax Division and its enforcement efforts may be found on the division’s website.