Two Greene County cousins have pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade taxes on income earned from stock sales, federal prosecutors said.
Dennis Radcliffe, 51, and Kenneth Radcliffe, 49, each of Elka Park, a hamlet of Hunter, pleaded guilty Thursday, March 30, to conspiring to evade taxes on income earned from stock sales.
Dennis and Kenneth Radcliffe each pleaded guilty to two conspiracies. In the first conspiracy, they conspired with each other to avoid taxes on their personal income, by failing to report to the IRS several million dollars of income earned principally from sales of penny stocks, from 2014 through 2017, according to U.S. Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Thomas Fatturosso, special agent in charge of New York Field Office of the IRS-Criminal Division..
The stock sales occurred in brokerage accounts that the men controlled, and which stood in the names of their companies Crackerjack Classics LLC (“Crackerjack”) and Universal Consulting LLC (“Universal”), the prosecutors said.
In the second conspiracy, the Radcliffes conspired with each other and with Joseph Radcliffe, Dennis’s father, to avoid taxes on about $500,000 in compensation that Crackerjack and Universal paid to Joseph, from 2013 through 2019, according to a press release.
At sentencing, scheduled on Aug. 10, the cousins each face up to five years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
Dennis Radcliffe has agreed to pay $77,552 in restitution to the IRS, and Kenneth Radcliffe has agreed to pay an additional $152,274 in restitution, according to the release.
Joseph Radcliffe, 76, also of Elka Park, was sentenced in August 2022 to three years of probation, to spend four consecutive weekends in jail as a condition of his probation, and to pay $109,106 in restitution to the IRS, following his guilty plea to tax evasion conspiracy.