Date: April 11, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
Camden, NJ — A Philadelphia man admitted to conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by paying himself and his co-workers in cash in order to avoid payroll taxes, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced.
Henry “Hank” Collins of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Karen M. Williams to an information charging him with one count of conspiring to defraud the IRS.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Collins worked at Davis Brothers Chimney Sweep & Masonry (“Davis Brothers”), a business located in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. Collins admitted that between Jan. 1, 2018 and April 30, 2024, he conspired with the spouse of the owner of Davis Brother to defraud the IRS. As part of the conspiracy, Collins utilized a commercial check casher to negotiate a substantial amount of Davis Brothers’s gross receipts checks. Collins used some of the resulting cash to pay himself and other Davis Brothers employees in cash. Collins provided the rest of the cash to the business owner and spouse. Collins then provided false and misleading information to the business’s outside accounting firm that resulted in the preparation and filing of false payroll tax returns that omitted the employees paid in cash and their cash wages. Collins also admitted filing false individual income tax returns for himself that concealed his own cash wages. Collins admitted that the conspiracy resulted in a tax loss of approximately $1 million.
The count of conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 18, 2025.
U.S. Attorney Habba credited special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jenifer Piovesan in Newark, with the investigation leading to today’s guilty plea.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Bender of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Camden.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.