Aug. 8, 2013 Staff Report
The owner of six Queens Papa John’s pizzeria franchises—including one that was in Sunnyside– was charged today for failing to pay $217,000 in state sales tax.
Syed Mehboob–who owned franchises in Astoria, Corona, Woodside, Bayside and Sunnyside—was arraigned this morning on charges ranging from second-degree grand larceny to falsifying business records.
Mehboob’s charges stem from tax filings between March 1, 2005, and November 30, 2010.
The Papa John’s franchise in Sunnyside, which was located at 40-18 Greenpoint Ave., closed quite some time ago. The pizzeria was reviewed by sunnysidefood.com, a local food blog, back in September 2011.
If convicted, Mehboob faces up to fifteen years in prison. He was released without bail.
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10 Comments
IT’S STILL OPEN!!! VET YOUR SOURCES BEFORE WRITING SOMETHING
The Papa John’s in Sunnyside is not closed, fyi..
Things happen.. sometimes taxes goes unpaid simply because funds were needed to keep the business afloat. Taxes sink businesses.. although.. these were sales taxes as I understand.. so I don’t know.. maybe that’s more straight forward of a violation. It seems to me though that if he was really trying to not pay them he would have found a better way to hide it, rather than it just blatantly showing up. I guess we’ll see.
True, all we know is that this man was arraigned and charged with second-degree grand larceny, first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, second-degree criminal possession of stolen property, filing false tax returns, and first-degree falsifying business records.
If these actions were deliberate and done with intent, someone should cancel their plans for the next 10-15 years.
They say between 2005 and 2010, he underreported his earnings by about $4 million. Sounds pretty shady!
If this was accidental, time to hire a new bookeeper!
Well, actually, if you think about the math, that’s 7000 and some change a year for five years for six stores. It’s obviously some oversight because I know people who did not pay a lot more than this in sales tax and settled it with the State without being charged of anything. So who knows what the criteria for the State is…
$217 thousand dollars! That’s some oversight.
Sad.
Love the pizza here, but I gotta go easy, it always goes straight to my butt.
But if you’re an unlicensed driver who breaks the speed limit and kills someone, it’s just a misdemeanor. Yeah, that happened today.
http://gothamist.com/2013/08/08/speeding_unliscensed_killer_given_o.php
Syed and his staff are good people. It’s most likely some record keeping oversight which will be straightened out with a fee.