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Massachusetts Businessman Pleads Guilty
A former Pittsfield, Mass., man pleaded guilty today in federal court in Boston to his role in a series of frauds and attempts to avoid paying taxes over more than a decade.
Michael J. Armitage, 56, pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor to three counts of false statements to a federally insured financial institution; three counts of tax evasion; one count of false statements to a federal official; one count of conspiracy, one count of false claims; and one count of endeavoring to obstruct a federal audit.
According to information presented to the court, Armitage did not file a single personal federal income tax return between 1993 and 2006 in spite of receiving millions of dollars in income from sources such as Power Development Co. LLC (PDC), an energy company that Armitage founded and controlled.
Armitage was required to repay more than $1 million to PDC for money that he had misappropriated, including approximately $340,000 in checks that he had written to himself but fraudulently mislabeled in PDC’s check register as payable to others.
Armitage used or submitted various false or fraudulent documents to perpetrate these fraud schemes, including a 2001 personal financial statement that omitted any debts owed to the IRS or to PDC and which claimed that his taxes were settled through 1999.
Armitage also tried to avoid paying taxes that had been previously assessed for three separate years: 1995, 1996 and 1998. He used various methods to conceal income and avoid collection, including withdrawing funds recently deposited in his bank account to maintain a low account balance and diverting payments due to himself to other accounts.
In another scheme, Armitage conspired with others to defraud the Federal Transportation Administration by submitting false, fraudulent and fictitious invoices for payment through the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority as part of a federal research grant into an electric bus and battery project.
Armitage’s efforts to defraud the Federal Transportation Administration included submitting invoices that falsely claimed that the Federal Transportation Administration’s share of the project costs did not exceed the maximum 50 percent, as well as seeking reimbursement for fictitious, inflated or inflated work that was never performed.
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Key Facts
- State: Massachusetts
- Category: White Collar Crime|Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release ↗
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