Ft. Salonga Man Pleads Guilty to $20M Fraud

Albert Cipoletti, 61, of Fort Salonga, has pleaded guilty for his role in a scheme to divert more than $20 million from special districts in Sacramento County, California by underpaying his clients' federal taxes.

According to a release from the United States Department of Justice, Eastern California District, Cipoletti was the chief executive officer of Ingentra HR Services Inc., a payroll services corporation based in Hauppauge.

In 2004, the company, then known as Humanic, was hired by Sacramento County to process payrolls for special districts including the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District, the cemetery district, the parks and recreation district, as well as two other businesses, SanDisk Corporation and The Stanley Works and Stanley Solutions Inc., said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in a press release.

As stated in the plea agreement, from 2005 until April 2010, Cipoletti and co-defendant Kerry Seaman, comptroller for Ingentra, devised a scheme to defraud his clients by collecting the correct amount from the clients but under reporting to the IRS the amount owed and diverting the difference to Ingentra's operating account for Ingentra's own use.

According to the plea agreement, Cipoletti and Seaman sent funding letters to the clients that correctly calculated payroll and federal tax withholdings for the clients' employees, and these clients wire-transferred funds to Ingentra for the purposes of paying both the payroll and taxes.

Cipoletti and Seaman then filed false forms to the IRS, understating the true employee tax withholdings for these clients.

Cipoletti is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Burrell on January 21, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. The maximum statutory penalty for this wire fraud violation is 20 years in prison and a fine of up to approximately $35 million.

The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.

Seaman is scheduled to make her initial appearance on November 18, 2010, at 2:00 p.m. before United States Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows and to enter a guilty plea on November 19, 2010 at 9:00 a.m. before Judge Burrell.

This is not the first time Cipoletti has been accused of defrauding clients in this way. According to a 2006 Newsday article, Cipoletti, then operating a company called Total Time, Inc.,  filed for bankruptcy that year leaving more than 600 clients with unpaid tax bills from the state and federal governments.