Massive fraud and a $53 million tax scheme led to a Kentucky businessman’s guilty plea and almost $130 million in restitution.
Wilbur Anthony Huff pleaded guilty to multiple tax crimes, including “massive fraud that involved the bribery of bank officials, the fraudulent purchase of an insurance company, and the defrauding of insurance regulators,” said Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Christy Romero. The plea was made public Tuesday.
Huff, 53, controlled a Florida business that managed client companies’ payrolls. However, from 2008 to 2010, Huff stole $53 million his clients owed in taxes and $5 million owed to an Oklahoma workers’ compensation insurance company.
The money funded Huff’s unrelated investments and personal items such as luxury cars. Huff was also involved in a massive fraud scheme from 2007 to 2010 to receive $11 million of government bailouts.
Huff conspired with New York’s Park Avenue Bank President and CEO Charles Antonucci and Senior Vice President Matthew L. Morris. Together they shuffled $6.5 million of bank money to make the organization fraudulently appear more financially stable to make it eligible for government funds.
Additionally, the trio also stole $2.3 million from a publicly traded company in order to repay the bank money owed for the shuffled transactions.
For at least $400,000, Huff bribed Morris and Antonucci to provide fraudulent credit letters, allow his companies to accumulate $9 million in overdrafts and fraudulently issue at least $4.5 million in bank loans.
Huff and Antonucci also conspired to purchase the worker’s compensation insurance company that Huff owned $5 million.
An investment firm loaned Antonucci $30 million dollars using the insurance company’s own assets as collateral. Huff, Morris and Antonucci falsely represented to insurance regulators “that Park Avenue Bank — not the Investment Firm — was funding the purchase,” the IG said.
Huff will be sentenced April 8 and is required to pay $10.8 million to the U.S. and almost $130 million in restitution. Antonucci and Morris pleaded guilty in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
