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A man from Diamond Bar has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for willfully failing to pay more than $200,000 in payroll taxes owed by his staffing company in the San Gabriel Valley. Robinson Rin Yang, 54, also known as "Robert Mora" and "David Lee," pleaded guilty to one count of willful failure to pay over-employment taxes in December 2022. He operated B&S Staffing, a staffing service business in Covina, from March 2016 to March 2020.
From mid-2017 until the end of 2019, B&S accrued large unpaid employment tax liabilities, failed to make timely employment tax deposits, and repeatedly failed to timely file quarterly employment tax returns with the IRS. B&S did not file employment tax returns for the periods ending June 30, 2017, through December 31, 2018, until February 2019. After these tax returns were filed, B&S again fell into non-compliance with its reporting obligations. B&S did not file employment tax returns for the quarterly tax periods ending March 31, 2019, through December 31, 2019, until September 2020.
Yang was aware of B&S's tax situation, but he willfully failed to pay over all the employment taxes due and owing, including income taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from employee wages. Instead, he repeatedly used his control over B&S to direct payments from the corporate bank account, which he controlled, for his personal benefit. For example, in July 2018, for the quarterly tax period ending on June 30, 2018, Yang willfully failed to account for and pay approximately $221,108 in B&S payroll taxes.
In total, B&S accrued approximately $2,791,783 in unpaid employment taxes during this 2½-year period. Yang has agreed to pay this amount in restitution to the IRS. Additionally, from 2017 to 2019, Yang did not pay himself a salary from B&S to frustrate IRS collection actions against him regarding his personal income taxes and to conceal the true extent of how much money he made. Instead, he caused weekly checks to be issued from B&S's corporate bank account to a business named "Advanced Business Konsulting," which he controlled.
Yang also used B&S funds for the down payment and monthly mortgage payments on his purchase of a home but kept the property titled in the name of another person to conceal his ownership of the property. He directed payments from the corporate bank accounts of B&S to pay for personal expenses, including a portion of his daughter's college tuition and funding for his other business interests, including a failed construction business and a failed restaurant.
Despite earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from his operation of B&S during each of the calendar years 2017 through 2019, Yang failed to timely file federal income tax returns for those years. Prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum that under Yang's management, B&S engaged in a long-running pattern of failing to pay federal employment taxes and timely file federal employment tax returns. "Despite knowing of the company's expanding tax debts, Yang repeatedly used his control over B&S to direct payments from the corporate bank account for his personal benefit and for the payment of other expenses."
IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter, and United States District Judge George H. Wu sentenced Yang. The judge also ordered Yang to pay $2,791,783 in restitution.
