New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud Kickback Conspiracy and Tax Evasion

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Juller Perez Salcedo, age 44, of Garfield, New Jersey, pled guilty today to conspiring to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, and also to tax evasion.

United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman; Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and Tammy L. Tomlins, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Newark Field Office of Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), made the announcement.

Perez Salcedo admitted that from at least 2015 to 2019, he co-owned a trucking company in New Jersey that transported products as a third-party contractor for a bedding company with a distribution facility in West Coxsackie, New York. As part of the fraudulent scheme, Perez paid kickbacks to the transportation manager of the bedding company in exchange for the use of the bedding company’s trucks and drivers to transport merchandise from West Coxsackie to Perez’s truck yard in Clifton, New Jersey, which allowed Perez to avoid certain transportation costs. Perez then fraudulently invoiced and received payment from the bedding company as if his trucking company had transported and delivered the merchandise from West Coxsackie when Perez and his trucking company did not in fact transport the merchandise from West Coxsackie. As a result of the scheme, the defendant caused $422,170.86 in losses to the bedding company.

Perez also evaded taxes between January 2014 and April 2018 by cashing gross receipts checks on behalf of his trucking business, providing false and incomplete information to tax preparers and omitting the cashed checks, and filing false federal income tax returns. Perez Salcedo evaded a total of $477,090 in taxes.

Perez Salcedo faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of supervised release of up to 3 years when he is sentenced by United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino on September 5, 2023.  A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other factors. Perez Salcedo also agreed to a forfeiture money judgment, and to pay restitution to the bedding company and the IRS.

The FBI and IRS-CI investigated this case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Wentworth-Ping is prosecuting this case.