James LaRock II, a 43-year-old self-employed logger and firewood dealer from Seneca Falls, NY, has been nailed for cooking the books on his federal tax returns over four straight years. The man didn’t just fudge numbers—he erased nearly $280,500 in taxable income from sight, leaving the IRS holding a $107,749 tab. Now, he’s paying the price.
U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. confirmed today that LaRock was sentenced to three years of probation by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa. The penalty also includes full restitution of $107,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. No jail time. No leniency on the debt. The court’s message: cheat the system, you’re still on the hook.
From 2010 through 2013, LaRock filed false personal income tax returns, deliberately underreporting his gross receipts and erasing the cost of goods sold—basic accounting tricks that scream intent. The omitted income totaled $280,470.72. That’s not a clerical error. That’s a calculated scam.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Richard A. Resnick and Tiffany H. Lee, who prosecuted the case, laid out the fraud in stark terms: LaRock, running a cash-heavy trade, exploited the opacity of his business to hide real earnings. The logging and firewood industry may be rural, but it’s not off the grid—and Uncle Sam was not fooled forever.
The case was built by the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations Division, under Special Agent-in-Charge James D. Robnett, New York Field Office. IRS-CI doesn’t chase small-time mistakes. They go after patterns. And LaRock’s four-year run of falsified filings was a pattern they were happy to break.
No plea deals masked the facts here. The conviction stands clean: James LaRock II broke federal law, dodged taxes, and got caught. Three years of probation won’t lock him up, but it puts him under federal supervision—and that $107,000 debt won’t disappear. In the world of white-collar crime, sometimes the numbers do the hard time.
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Key Facts
- State: New York
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: Official Source ↗
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