Hasidic-Owned Concrete Companies Plead Guilty To $800K Tax Fraud
David Gross, left, and David Friedman. Image by Orange County District Attorney
By Ari Feldman January 5, 2018
Three concrete corporations run by Hasidic Jews in upstate New York pled guilty to withholding $780,000 in taxes, the Times Herald-Record reported.
Two principals of the mixing companies, David Gross and David Friedman, were also sentenced to misdemeanor tax fraud. The sentences were given in late December.
Two of the companies — Concrete On Demand and Copour — have offices in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic enclave in Rockland County. The village is almost exclusively inhabited by members of the Satmar Hasidic group. An office for the third company, Comix, Inc., is in a nearby town in Orange County.
Each company admitted to collecting sales tax but not paying it to the state — withholding as much as $50,000 in one year.
Both Gross and Friedman gave the court checks for the full amounts owed to the state by their companies shortly after sentencing. Court-imposed penalties for the tax fraud could be as high as double the amount the nearly $800,000 the companies owed.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Language apps are putting Hebrew school in teens’ back pockets. But do they work?
-
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
-
Fast Forward Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil for undermining U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism, judge rules
-
Fast Forward Is the Passover Seder Zionist?
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 2
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 3
Fast Forward How Coke’s Passover recipe sparked an antisemitic conspiracy theory
- 4
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion This Nazi-era story shows why Trump won’t fix a terrifying deportation mistake
-
Opinion I operate a small Judaica business. Trump’s tariffs are going to squelch Jewish innovation.
-
Fast Forward Language apps are putting Hebrew school in teens’ back pockets. But do they work?
-
Books How a Jewish boy from Canterbury became a Zulu chieftain
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.