New Haven, Conn./WTIC - A West Hartford man who owns a string of restaurants in Connecticut and Massachusetts has pled guilty for his involvement in a tax fraud scheme.
William Chen waived his right to be indicted and pled guilty to two counts of filing a false tax return.
U.S. Attorney Vanessa Avery says Chen, who owns restaurants in Bloomfield, Wethersfield, West Hartford and Canton, as well as in Millbury, Massachusetts, paid to have softward installed on his businesses point-of-sale system for restaurant orders.
The purpose, say prosecutors, was to deliberatly delete transactions from the POS system in order to create fraudulaent sales records to reduce gross receipts and the amont of sales tax collected.
In addition, law enforcment officials say Chen failed to withhold, account for and pay federal income taxes.
The scheme resulted in $2 million in tax losses between 2013 and 2020.