Former Miami-Dade County Employee Sentenced for Tax Evasion | WPN World People News

A Coral Gables, Florida, resident and former employee of the General Services Administration (GSA) of Miami-Dade County was sentenced to serve 51 months in prison for tax evasion to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $556,254 in restitution to the U.S. Treasury, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced Wednesday.

On Oct. 15, 2014, Jesus Pons pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. According to the court documents, Pons was a computer services manager at the GSA of Miami-Dade County. He was responsible for managing and allocating resources to information technology projects for the county. Court filings also establish that he was responsible for supervising and managing tasks performed by county vendors. From 2007 to 2011, Pons received money in the form of illegal kickback payments from two county vendors, Data Industries and Paradyne Consulting Services. In exchange for these illegal kickbacks, Pons approved payments from Miami-Dade County to the vendors for consulting work that was never performed. According to the plea agreement, Pons did not report the illegal kickbacks on his tax returns. From 2007 through 2011, Pons earned $1,666,998 in income from the scheme that he did not report to the IRS, causing $556,254 in tax loss.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice