Erick Calderon, Tax Fraud, Florida 2015

In a shocking move, Erick Calderon, a 40-year-old man from Westlake, Florida, has been charged with conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the indictment, Calderon owned a construction company called SUTS Contractors, Inc. and was employed at two other construction companies, Global Drywall Services, LLC and IWES Contractors, Inc. Between February 2015 and September 2015, Calderon and others paid these companies’ construction workers in cash through a shell company called El Valle.

The indictment alleges that El Valle fraudulently posed as a subcontractor of SUTS, Global Drywall, and IWES, which allowed those companies to write checks to El Valle for services purportedly performed. The checks were then cashed at various check cashing stores in Miami-Dade County and the cash was returned to Calderon, who in turn, paid the companies’ workers in cash.

It is alleged that the scheme minimized the payment of federal employment taxes by SUTS, Global Drywall, and IWES and caused them to underreport wages performed on construction jobs by these construction companies to the IRS.

If convicted, Calderon faces up to five years of imprisonment. The case is being investigated by IRS-CI in Miami and DOL-OIG, with Assistant United States Attorney Lois Foster-Steers handling the prosecution.

An indictment is only an accusation and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The case is ongoing, and further details are expected to be released as more information becomes available.

The indictment was announced by Juan Antonio Gonzalez, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Tyler R. Hatcher, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, Miami Field Office, and Rafiq Ahmad, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 21-cr-20183.

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