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
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
