Co-Owner of Mattapan plumbing and heating supply company sentenced for filing false tax returns

Date: Aug. 12, 2024

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BOSTON - The co-owner of a Mattapan plumbing and heating supply company was sentenced for filing false tax returns in connection with a scheme to use millions of dollars of unreported business receipts to buy gold and silver bars.

Claudio Poles of Dorchester, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani to four months in prison and one year of supervised release. Poles was also ordered to pay a fine of $200,000 and $2,961,261 in restitution. In May 2024, Poles pleaded guilty to four counts of filing false tax returns.

Poles failed to accurately disclose the company's gross business receipts to its tax preparer, who prepared the company's tax returns using the false information Poles provided. Poles then used some of the unreported gross receipts to purchase more than $10 million of gold and silver bars for himself from bullion dealers. To conceal the nature of the purchases he made from the company's bank accounts, Poles described the purchases in the memo section of the checks, as being for boilers, materials and other plumbing and heating supplies.

Between 2019 and 2022, Poles falsely reported losses on his individual tax returns and omitted personal income that he received from the business by purchasing the gold and silver bars.

Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Harry Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) in Boston made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mackenzie A. Queenin of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.