CLEVELAND — A Solon man was indicted and charged with two counts of alleged wire fraud on Thursday.
56-year-old Ciaran Dillon, the former Chief Financial Officer of Claddagh Irish Pub's parent company CDG Acquisition, LLC, was charged after allegedly defrauding multiple states of sales tax revenue where the restaurant chain operated.
According to the Department of Justice, Dillon allegedly directed a company accountant between January 2000 and May 2018 to pay certain states less sales tax than the amount that should have been paid.
Dillon allegedly defrauded Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin out of over $1 million in sales tax revenue collected from CDG customers at fifteen restaurants.
"The indictment states that based on the defendant’s instruction, the accountant would edit the company's sales and sales tax figures, file false tax returns and pay states the amount instructed by the defendant. It is alleged that one common way to underpay sales tax was for the company to report and pay sales tax for four weeks during a five-week period, leading CDG to collect a week’s worth of sales taxes that were omitted from state sales tax filings," said the Department of Justice in a press release.
This case is currently being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandro A. Abreu and was investigated by the Cleveland FBI.
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