Florida resident sentenced to 78 months in prison for tax evasion

Date: Nov. 14, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

Newark, NJ - A resident of Florida was sentenced today to 78 months in prison for tax evasion, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.

Jason Kronick of Boca Raton, Florida, formerly of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, was convicted on June 26, 2024, by a federal jury of four counts of tax evasion following a trial before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton, who imposed the sentence today in Newark federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and the evidence at trial:

From 2010 through 2017, Kronick evaded payment of more than $8.6 million in income and employment taxes, including penalties and interest, despite having earned more than $20 million in taxable income. Kronick also collected approximately $200,000 in payroll taxes from employees of his company, but failed to remit those withholdings to the IRS and evaded his obligation to do so. Kronick evaded these taxes by, among other things, using approximately $1.8 million from accounts controlled by him to buy more than 40 luxury watches; spending more than $4.7 million to pay for home renovations and interior decorating; transferring more than $1.8 million, including funds originating from business accounts, to various casinos, where he converted the money to chips, gambled, and then redeemed chips for approximately $1.8 million in cash; and cashed approximately $159,000 in checks at check-cashing businesses to conceal his income and assets from the IRS.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Wigenton sentenced Kronick to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $10.27 million in restitution.

U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan, with the investigation leading to the conviction.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rachelle M. Navarro and Christopher Fell of the Criminal Division in Newark.

IRS-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. IRS-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.