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Over a five-year period beginning in 2014, Jonathan D. Michael of Union County gave his boss a W-4 falsely claiming that he was exempt from having any federal tax withheld, authorities said.
The IRS notified Michael in 2016 that he wasn't entitled to exempt status, but he wrote to the company and contended that his bogus W-4 was correct, they said.
Michael, of Springfield, also didn't file any personal income tax returns, even though he was paid roughly $1.5 million in salary, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger and Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division said in a joint announcement.
In doing so, Michael shorted the Internal Revenue Service of $375,000, jurors in U.S. District Court in Newark found.
They convicted him of tax evasion and failing to file personal income tax returns.
Michael is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23.
Sellinger and Goldberg credited special agents of the IRS-Criminal Investigation Division with the investigation leading to the guilty verdict secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Feldman Nikic of his Cybercrime Unit in Newark and by Trial Attorney Michael C. Vasiliadis of the Tax Division in Washington, D.C.
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