Roberto Donna, one of the Washington area’s top chefs, pleaded guilty to charges that he cheated Arlington County out of its taxes.
Donna, the impresario behind such swanky eateries as Galileo and a two-time Washington area “Chef of the Year” winner, admitted in Arlington Court on Thursday morning that he embezzled cash that should have gone into county coffers.
He was put on five years of probation and ordered to pay more than $156,000 in restitution.
Authorities said that Donna repeatedly filed reports on the county-mandated meals’ taxes he was collecting in his now-defunct Bebo Trattoria, but he wasn’t handing over the cash. Efforts to reach Donna were unsuccessful.
It’s a precipitous collapse for a man who ran high-end Italian kitchens around the capital region.
Now, Donna is offering private cooking lessons out of his home and contributing recipes to Wisconsin cheese books.
A native of Italy, Donna moved to the capital as a teenager.
He opened Galileo in 1984 and by the 1990s was a dominant force in Washington’s still-emerging haute cuisine scene. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic Region in 1996.
He was on the national scene, too.
Wine Spectator called Galileo of the “10 best Italian restaurants in America,” and Donna made appearances on “The Today Show” and “Iron Chef America.” His cuisine and wine selection earned raves, but his bookkeeping left a lot to be desired.
Galileo filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and his efforts to reopen foundered.
“Roberto went to a culinary school,” an associate told the Washington City Paper last year, “not accounting school.”
Arlington authorities took a dimmer view of the chef.
“He was an elusive, clever and amiable con man,” county Treasurer Frank O’Leary told The Washington Examiner. “This guy is one slick article.”
O’Leary’s staff had been after Donna for years but were stymied by Donna’s careful business practices, O’Leary said.
“We’d go to the restaurant and all the equipment is rented. What are you going to seize?” O’Leary said. “So you go, where’s Roberto’s bank account? ‘He doesn’t have one.'”
