New Jersey Man Sentenced for Wire Fraud Kickback Conspiracy and Tax Evasion

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Juller Perez Salcedo, age 45, of Garfield, New Jersey, was sentenced today to three years of probation, including 6 months of home detention, for conspiring to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, and for tax evasion.

United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman; Craig L. Tremaroli, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and Jenifer L. Piovesan, Special Agent in Charge of the Newark Field Office of Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), made the announcement.

As part of his prior guilty plea, Perez Salcedo admitted that from at least 2015 to 2019, he co-owned a trucking company in New Jersey that transported products as a third-party contractor for a bedding company with a distribution facility in West Coxsackie, New York. As part of the fraudulent scheme, Perez paid kickbacks to the transportation manager of the bedding company, Leonard Hummel, in exchange for the use of the bedding company’s trucks and drivers to transport merchandise from West Coxsackie to Perez’s truck yard in Clifton, New Jersey, which allowed Perez to avoid certain transportation costs. Perez then fraudulently invoiced and received payment from the bedding company as if his trucking company had transported and delivered the merchandise from West Coxsackie when Perez and his trucking company did not in fact transport the merchandise from West Coxsackie. As a result of the scheme, Perez caused $422,170.86 in losses to the bedding company.

Perez also evaded taxes between January 2014 and April 2018 by cashing gross receipts checks on behalf of his trucking business, providing false and incomplete information to tax preparers and omitting the cashed checks, and filing false federal income tax returns. Perez Salcedo evaded a total of $477,090 in taxes.

United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino also ordered Perez to pay $422,170.86 in restitution to the bedding company, and $477,090.00 to the IRS, and separately ordered forfeiture of a money judgment totaling $422,170.86 in proceeds derived from the fraud.

Hummel previously pled guilty and was sentenced on May 17, 2024, to two years of probation for conspiring to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud. Judge D’Agostino also ordered Hummel to pay $161,784 in restitution to the bedding company and ordered forfeiture of a money judgment totaling $17,000.

The FBI and IRS-CI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Wentworth-Ping prosecuted the case.