Boston Grand Prix's Former CFO Gets 4 Years In Jail For Tax Fraud

BOSTON — The former Chief Financial Officier of the Boston Grand Prix will spend four years behind bars and pay almost $2 million in restitution after pleading guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, and filing false tax returns, United States Attorney Rachael Rollins said Tuesday.

John Casey, 58, formerly of Ipswich, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Boston in connection with multiple schemes to defraud small business financing companies and the Internal Revenue Service.

Casey is due to report to prison on April 12, but WCVB reports that Casey is currently dependent on his sister, undergoing dialysis 10 hours a day while he waits for a kidney transplant.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs sentenced Casey to four years in prison and three years of supervised release. Casey has been ordered to forfeit $1,570,399, and pay $1,998,097 in restitution.

Casey became the CFO of the Boston Grand Prix in January 2015. The Boston Grand Prix was a proposed IndyCar race set to hit the Boston Seaport in 2016, but the event was canceled and replaced by a race in New York.

After the Grand Prix's cancellation, Casey appeared in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to account for the project's funds but failed to include his income from the 2015-2016 attempted race on his tax returns, court documents show.

In 2021, Casey pleaded guilty to 23 counts of wire fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, four counts of money laundering, and three counts of filing false tax returns.

Casey also owned an ice rink in Peabody from Oct. 2013 until he sold it in June 2016. Between Oct. 2014 and Oct. 2016, Casey obtained over $743,000 in equipment funding and $145,000 in small business loans for the rink using false documents as he no longer owned the rink during four months of the payments.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Casey provided fake invoices for the equipment, false bank records showing deposits into his accounts related to the rink, falsely inflated personal and corporate tax returns and provided fraudulent financial statements claiming ownership and the value of assets related to the rink.

Most of the funds provided by the victim companies were never repaid, Rollins said.

Casey also orchestrated a scheme to obtain Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Paycheck Protection Program loans available under the Coronavirus Aid Relief by submitting false applications for companies he created and controlled. According to the U.S. Attorney's office, those funds and loans were used for personal expenses.

During his pandemic assistance fraud scheme, Casey stole the identities of two women, using their personal information to file fake applications, Rollins said.

Between April 2020 and April 2021, approximately $676,552 in COVID-19 relief funds were deposited into bank accounts controlled by Casey, which he used for personal expenses, including a three-carat diamond ring which was ordered forfeited, a six-month membership to Match.com, private school tuition, residential rent payments, living expenses, payments on personal credit card accounts, restaurant meals, car payments, and luxury hotel stays, Rollins said.

Casey also admitted to laundering the proceeds of his fraud schemes and failed to include the income from the Peabody rink fraud scheme on his 2014, 2015, and 2016 personal federal tax returns.