Owner of Landscaping Business Sentenced for Diverting Over $2 Million of Business Receipts

On March 12, 2015, in Camden, New Jersey, Nicholas Lepore, of Deptford, was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison and two years of supervised release. Lepore previously pleaded guilty to tax evasion. Lepore owned and operated Down to Earth Landscaping and Irrigation, Inc. (Down to Earth), which provided landscaping and irrigation services to commercial and residential customers. Down to Earth was a subchapter S corporation and as the owner, Lepore was required to report the flow through income and losses from Down to Earth on his personal tax returns. Lepore routinely cashed customer checks at local check cashing businesses to disguise the amount of income received by Down to Earth. Customer checks totaling $2,148,862 were deposited in years 2007 through 2010. Additionally, Lepore failed to file tax returns for the years 2007 through 2010 and thus, did not include any of the customer checks as income.