PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The owners of a popular South Philly cheesesteak restaurant were sentenced Thursday to nearly two years in federal prison for tax fraud.
Tony Luke’s owners, 57-year-old Nicholas Lucidonio and 84-year-old Anthony Lucidonio Sr., were sentenced to 20 months and ordered to pay more than $1.4 million in restitution — in addition to the more than $140,000 in cash the government already seized from the restauranteurs.
They were indicted in 2020 for tax evasion. They pleaded guilty in 2022 to hiding more than $8 million in cash receipts from the IRS between 2006 and 2016, depositing only a portion of restaurant receipts into business bank accounts, and providing incomplete information to their accountant.
This, in turn, caused their accountant to file false tax returns that “substantially underreported business receipts and income,” the Department of Justice said.
They also committed employment tax fraud by paying employees off the books in cash.
This too went undetected, as the pair paid most employees a portion of their wages on the books, then paid the remainder of their wages in cash without withholding federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare taxes or paying those to the IRS, the DOJ said.
In addition to the 20-month prison sentence, a judge ordered that they each serve three years of supervised release.