Under his plea deal, Allen Weisselberg agreed to pay nearly $2 million in fines.
Washington:
Allen Weisselberg, a former executive at the Trump Organization, was sentenced Tuesday to five months in prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
Weisselberg, 75, served as the chief financial officer of former President Donald Trump’s real estate and entertainment group from 2005 to 2021.
He pleaded guilty to 15 counts of tax fraud in August in a deal in which he agreed to testify at the criminal trial against his former employer’s company.
In a statement announcing the verdict, New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg called it a 13-year plan to defraud federal, state and city authorities.
Weisselberg’s testimony helped prosecutors secure the December 6 conviction of the Trump Organization and its sister company Trump Payroll Corp on 17 similar charges of fraud and tax evasion involving the falsification of business records.
Although he testified against the company, Weisselberg has not implicated the former president, who is seeking the White House again in 2024, in any crime.
Weisselberg, a close friend of the Trump family, admitted that he had schemes with the company to receive undeclared benefits, such as a rent-free apartment in an upscale Manhattan neighborhood, luxury cars for him and his wife, and private tuition for his grandchildren.
Under his plea deal, Weisselberg agreed to pay nearly $2 million in fines and penalties in addition to jail time and five years’ probation.
After the verdict against his family business in December, Trump stated on his social media platform that the Trump Organization was not responsible for “Weisselberg committing tax fraud on his personal tax return.”
The former president, whose two sons currently run the company, called the New York case a “witch hunt.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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