A longtime Town of Oyster Bay official admitted to failing to report more than $2 million in consulting fees on his federal income taxes over a six-year span, court documents show.
Frederick Ippolito pleaded guilty Tuesday to income tax evasion at Central Islip federal court for not filing his earnings to the Internal Revenue Service from 2008 to 2013.
“The defendant agrees to pay restitution to the IRS for the total tax loss caused by filing false individual tax returns…plus interest and penalties, to be calculated at the time of sentencing,” the 77-year-old Syosset man wrote in court paperwork.
Ippolito, the town’s commissioner of planning and development, received the consulting fees from Old Bethpage-based Carlo Lizza & Sons, Paving, Inc., and a principal of that company, and then failed to report the fees on his personal tax returns or the tax returns of entities he controlled.
Ippolito is the president of CAI Associates, LTD, a consulting and snow removal business, and a former officer of CAI Restaurant, Inc., which used to own Christiano’s, the Italian restaurant that Billy Joel was said to have written a song about.
The IRS said in a statement at the time of Ippolito’s arrest saying: “The public expects their elected and appointed officials to obey the same laws as it does.”
A town spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the plea and an update on Ippolito’s employment status. Despite being arrested last year, he earned $144,170 as the town planning commissioner, according to payroll records obtained by the Press.
It isn’t the only scandal in Oyster Bay, either. Six months after Ippolito’s arrest, Harendra Singh, a Syosset-based restaurateur, was arrested for, among other things, allegedly bribing an official in the Town of Oyster Bay, which has contracts with Singh to operate several restaurants on town land. A town official was not charged in that case.
