How could affect Immigrants the closure of 300 post offices?

The U.S. Postal Service announced this week that it is offering up to 30,000 employees a $15,000resignation bonus to leave their jobs. The initiative would cost the USPS $450 million but could save another $500 million over the next fiscal year and a possibility of a major delays on the process of delivering mail on the peak season (Christmas).

Trimming back and going lean. It's like the Richard Simmons diet, for the post office.

And this no-carb plan offers participating employees an initial payment of $10,000 in the coming October followed by $5,000 in October 2010. Desk clerks, distribution center mail handlers and clerks, and motor vehicle technicians are eligible for the resignation bonus program. And they have until September 25th 2009 to decide.

The slow economy is not the only factor that has motivated the cutting measures. With increasing online and electronic communications, the USPS has already been experiencing a steady decline in mail deliveries. That decline paired with advances in technology, automating more aspects of the postal collection and sorting process, have created the need for fewer employees. In the current year alone, mail volume has dropped 12.6 percent. And if a $2.4 billion third-quarter loss wasn't difficult enough news, the projection of $7 billion as the total year's loss gives perspective for the job eliminations.

The resignation bonus is one of several cost-lowering efforts that also involved closing 300 post offices across the country, cutting over 100 million work hours, and mandating hiring and salary freezes for top executives.

The USPS negotiated the plan with workers unions, American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.

The success of the plan will be telling. If it meets a positive response, it could spark a re-emergence of the USPS---perhaps a leaner, greener machine equipped to adapt to the country's changing needs. And a best-case scenario for resignation bonuses in the Post Office could serve as a catalyst for other similar incentives in other government agencies.

The Postal Service lost $2.4 billion during its third quarter and forecasts a $7 billion year-end loss, according to figures released earlier this month. The financial woes can be tied in large measure to roughly $7 billion in mandated payments to fund current and future retiree health benefits. Postal officials say they will not make the payments for future retiree benefits if it faces an expected cash shortfall next month.

The decision to offer buyouts comes amid several other cost-cutting moves. The Postal Service may close about 300 post offices across the country, mostly in dense urban areas, while selling off other expensive, but underused, retail locations. It has already cut more than 100 million work hours this year, equal to 57,000 positions. It mandated a nationwide hiring freeze and salary freeze for top executives, stopped post office construction projects and closed six regional offices.

Undocumented Immigrants evading taxes?

A North Dartmouth woman was sentenced today in federal court after being convicted on charges of paying out more than $40 million in cash wages through their temporary employment agency in order to evade millions of dollars in tax payments and workers compensation insurance premiums.

United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Tyrone G. Barney, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation - Boston Field Office; Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - Boston Field Office; and Anthony DiPaolo, Chief of Investigations for the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts, announced that AIMEE KING MCELROYof North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, was sentenced to 78 months imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. In addition, KING MCELROY was ordered to pay $9,103,335 million dollars in restitution.

In February 2008, KING MCELROY and her husband, DANIEL W. MCELROY, were convicted, following a 2 ½ week jury trial, of conspiring to defraud the IRS and their workers compensation insurers, three counts of mail fraud, and fourteen counts of procuring false payroll tax returns. DANIEL W. MCELROY was previously sentenced to 108 months imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years supervised release and the same restitution.

It was revealed at trial that from the early-1990's to June 2001, the MCELROYS operated a temporary employment agency, which was based in Taunton and later in Easton, Massachusetts, that did business under the names the Dan Agency, the Daily Agency, Daily A. King Labor, Inc., Pro Temp. Company, PTC and Precission (sic) Temp. Corp. To avoid paying employment taxes, such as Social Security and Medicare, and to fraudulently reduce the businesses’ insurance premiums for workers compensation insurance, the defendants arranged to pay a large share of the businesses’ payroll in cash. In excess of $43 million in unreported cash was paid out to employees as a result of the scheme. This represents the largest under-the-table payroll scheme ever prosecuted in Massachusetts. The hidden payroll resulted in a loss of approximately $10 million to the IRS and approximately $7 million to workers compensation insurance companies.

The agencies provided hundreds of laborers to factories and food processing business throughout Eastern Massachusetts, especially in fish processing plants on the New Bedford waterfront, where roughly a third of their employees worked. Like every other employer, the defendants were required to pay payroll (or FICA) taxes on their payroll, and to obtain workers compensation insurance. The amounts a business pays in payroll taxes and workers compensation insurance premiums are based largely on the size of its payroll.

The defendants were subject to a court order issued by The Honorable Rya Zobel in 1994 that forbade them and their agency from paying cash to their employees. The judgment was a result of a civil action brought by the United States Department of Labor. Judge Zobel’s Order prompted the defendants to take additional measures to conceal their payroll. Most of all, they established a straw corporation called ProTemp Co. through which they funneled most of their cash payroll. Later, they opened another straw corporation called Precission (sic) Temp, Co. for the same purpose.

Although nominally separate, Daily A. King, ProTemp and Precission Temp were run as a single business. To disguise their ownership and control of the ProTemp and Precission Temp, the defendants installed two of their employees, Dich Trieu and Xieu Van Son, as the nominal presidents of the two companies. The defendants also veiled their control of the two companies by directing their in-house accountant, Charles Wallace, to file false tax returns in the names of the three businesses that omitted the company’s cash payroll. To mislead their insurance auditors, Wallace, at the defendant’s direction, fabricated payroll records that reflected a smaller payroll than even that reported in the false tax returns filed.

KING MCELROY was ordered to self-report to the Bureau of Prisons on December 2, 2008.

Undocumented Workers do no paid taxes.!!!!!! That Sounds familiar to you. A myth or a lie?
Tax evasion is in progress BUT not from Undocumented workers from Citizens!!!!!!.




A U.S. Citizen preventing the IRS from assessing and attempting to collect more than $34 million of unpaid payroll tax liabilities from Trebert, Ewing and May, and creating the appearance that these sham staffing/payroll entities employed more than 4500 nursing facility employees, when they did not. Where Nativists, Minuteman groups, Lou Dobbs, Tommy Tancredo stand on this issue? Hypocrisy is not a Family Value?


FORMER NURSING HOME EXECUTIVE SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON AND ORDERED TO PAY $11 MILLION RESTITUTION

Tarrant County Resident Convicted of Various Offenses Related to Operation of Nursing Homes


FORT WORTH, Texas — Stephen Michael Ewing, 60, of Bedford, Texas, who was convicted of various offenses related to his operation of nursing homes in Texas and elsewhere, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means to 120 months in prison, announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper of the Northern District of Texas. In addition, Judge Means ordered that Ewing pay approximately $11 million in restitution. Ewing was ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on August 25, 2008.

A jury convicted Stephen Michael Ewing in March on one count of conspiracy, seven counts of tax evasion, five counts of mail fraud, seven counts of making false statements to government agencies and seven counts of making false statements regarding health care.

From August 1999 to mid-May 2004, Ewing, along with co-defendants, Gary Trebert and Larry May, conspired together, and with others, to defraud the U.S. by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful government functions of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the ascertainment, computation, assessment, and collection of the revenue, that is, nursing facility employees’ withheld income taxes, social security taxes and Medicare taxes, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the administration of the Social Security Act and the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Gary Trebert, 51, of Frisco, Texas, a licensed attorney, pled guilty in February 2008 to conspiracy to defraud the government by obstructing and impeding lawful government functions of the IRS and HHS and tax evasion and aiding and abetting. Trebert admitted that in April 2004, he attempted to evade and defeat the assessment and payment of more than $4,113,000 in withholding taxes taken out of employees’ pay at 42 nursing homes he and his coconspirators controlled. While Trebert faces a maximum statutory sentence of 10 years in prison, the government, as part of its his plea agreement, will make a non-binding recommendation that the Court sentence Trebert to an eight-year prison sentence. Trebert also may be ordered to pay restitution which will be based on all his criminal conduct relating to the offenses charged in the indictment, including, but not limited to, unpaid taxes and unlawfully obtained healthcare payments. He is scheduled to be sentenced on August 11, 2008.

Co-defendant Larry Gordon May, 49, of Hurst, Texas, pled guilty to his role in the conspiracy in October 2007. He was sentenced in April to 48 months in prison and is currently serving that sentence.

Ewing and his coconspirators, using the names of sham corporate entities, obtained control of 70 licensed nursing facilities with thousands of patient beds and thousands of employees. In order to acquire control of these facilities, Trebert, Ewing and May used false statements and false and fraudulent documents, including Applications for Nursing Facility License and Medicaid Contracts, Medicare Federal Provider Enrollment applications, ownership documents, IRS Employer Identification Number applications, Health Insurance Benefit Agreements, and Electronic Fund Transfer forms. Their falsifications included falsely identifying relatives as owners, operators, and managers of the nursing homes on the applications; failing to disclose staffing/payroll companies on nursing home applications; failing to disclose Ewing and May as the true owner/operators of nursing homes; and forging names of individuals on filed documents to divert responsibility away from the three defendants. They used the false statements and documents to hide from HHS, state licensing and Medicaid agencies, and the IRS, the true control and management of the nursing facilities, their responsibility for more than $200 million in money derived from the nursing homes, and their responsibility for the nursing facilities’ residents.

Both Trebert and May testified against Ewing at trial. Trebert testified that he and Ewing repeatedly discussed the creation and the overseas payroll companies to interfere with IRS efforts to collect the payroll taxes. Trebert also testified that Ewing once boasted about having previously operated nursing homes without having to pay the payroll taxes. Larry May testified that Trebert and Ewing made him president of the company, even though he told them he was not qualified.

May further testified that, during some of the periods covered by the Indictment, he was making $10,000 to $25,000 per month for doing little more than signing documents, including tax returns, and taking tax returns to England to mail back to the IRS in the U.S. More than 150 sham staffing/payroll entities, many with foreign business addresses at drop boxes in England and Austria, were created to file Form 941 employer withholding tax returns with the IRS, preventing the IRS from assessing and attempting to collect more than $34 million of unpaid payroll tax liabilities from Trebert, Ewing and May, and creating the appearance that these sham staffing/payroll entities employed more than 4500 nursing facility employees, when they did not.

The defendants diverted to themselves and their personal activities substantial sums of money derived from their nursing home operations and from the non-payment of employees’ withheld payroll taxes. At trial, the government presented evidence that, during the period covered by the Indictment, Ewing spent more than $2.5 million in money derived from the nursing home operations on his personal expenses. The total expenditures included more than $200,000 at department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, and more than $250,000 on automobiles