Federal authorities said they have indicted the owners of three liquor stores and a car dealership employee in a crackdown on businesses that avoid cash reporting requirements designed to catch criminals.
Prosecutors said the businesses broke up bank deposits of nearly $5 million in cash into amounts of less than $10,000 to avoid reporting the money to the U.S. Treasury Department. Federal law requires that cash transactions larger than $10,000 in a single day be reported so there’s a paper trail that law enforcement can follow, and businesses that structure deposits to avoid reporting requirements face federal criminal prosecution, said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod Rosenstein.
“People who earn money through criminal activity, or who lie to the IRS to evade taxes, usually deal in cash and try to avoid leaving a paper trail,” Rosenstein said.
Jin I. Park, the owner of the Flavors of the South liquor store in Capitol Heights, faces eight counts. He could not be reached Tuesday.
From September 2008 to February 2010, 42-year-old Park deposited a total of $2.2 million in business receipts in bank accounts in amounts of less than $10,000 in order to avoid the legal requirement, prosecutors said. The deposits were generally made at a bank branch in Glen Burnie or Severn.
A similar structuring scheme was used by business owners in Baltimore and Randallstown.
Jong C. Kim, the owner of the GNG Village Liquors in Baltimore, broke up the deposits of $2.5 million at different banks from 2006 into this year, prosecutors said. Jin Ho Kim, owner of Randallstown Plaza Liquors, allegedly structured nearly $600,000 going into banks from August 2008 to December 2009 into deposits of less then $10,000 apiece.
Also on Tuesday, a three-count indictment was returned against Nubia Fuentes and the Fuentes Brothers Auto Sales in Jessup.
In June, an undercover law enforcement agent went to the car dealership and told Nubia Fuentes that he wanted to pay cash to buy a car, but was involved in drug trafficking and did not want paperwork filed with the government that would identify him as paying cash.
Fuentes allegedly assured the undercover cop that he would not file the required forms.
The agent paid $11,378 in cash, and the car dealership did not notify the treasury that it accepted a cash transaction greater than $10,000.
The liquor store owners face up to five years in prison, and Fuentes faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.
