SECOND NEW YORK CLOTHING MANUFACTURER
SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR TAX FRAUD

WASHINGTON D.C. - Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division, and Nancy Jardini, Chief, IRS Criminal Investigation, announced today that at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson sentenced Jose Torres to 21 months imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Mr. Torres was also fined $5,000 and ordered to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service by filing truthful and amended corporate and individual tax returns. In determining the sentence, Judge Gleeson found that Mr. Torres had caused a tax loss to the government of more than $1 million.

On May 9, 2003, Mr. Torres was charged in a two-count indictment with filing fraudulent corporate income tax returns on behalf of New Arrivals Sportswear, Inc. for the fiscal years ending September 30, 1996 and September 30, 1997. New Arrivals was a sewing factory located at 248 McKibbin Street, Brooklyn, NY that Mr. Torres owned and operated during the 1990s. On February 27, 2004, Mr. Torres pled guilty to Count One of the indictment, which charged him with filing a fraudulent corporate tax return for the 1996 fiscal year. According to the indictment, from 1995 to 1997 Torres filed false corporate income tax returns that omitted gross receipts totaling more than $2 million.

Jose Torres was the second Brooklyn sewing factory owner sentenced to jail for tax fraud in six weeks. On September 23, 2004, Luis Estevez, who operated Jasmine Fashions, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison by United States District Judge David Trager for filing a false corporate income tax return for his company for the 1996 fiscal year.

Assistant Attorney General Eileen J. O’Connor thanked Tax Division Trial Attorney James Chapman, who prosecuted the case. She also thanked the special agents of the Internal Revenue Service, whose assistance was essential to the successful investigation and prosecution of the case.

Additional information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division and its enforcement efforts can be found at www.usdoj.gov/tax.

###

04-729