Norwood Contractor Pleads Guilty to Hiding More Than $1 Million from IRS

A Norwood business owned pleaded guilty on Wednesday of hiding more than a million dollars ”by intentionally filing false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service,” according to U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office.

Michael Olen, 60, who owned and operating O’Lyn Contractors, Inc., a roofing service based in Norwood, pleaded guilty to ”making and subscribing a materially false tax return” after being charged in January 2015. He will be sentenced on May 27.

Olen hid more than $1 million from the IRS, said Ortiz’s office.

According to Ortiz’s office:

“O’Lyn’s customers generally paid for roofing services by check, and Olen used a local tax preparer to draft his business and personal tax returns based on business revenue for the year. But in tax year 2008, Olen hid a substantial amount of his business income from his tax preparer by diverting customer payments to his personal accounts. Consequently, the tax preparer unwittingly entered false figures for O’Lyn’s business income, and Olen’s personal income, on the relevant tax returns.

“In 2008, Olen hid 97 payments in this manner, diverting 78 of them to his personal bank accounts and cashing 19 of them at a local check cashing service. In total, Olen underreported his 2008 income from O’Lyn by $207,567. Moreover, Olen used the same method to hide income during tax years 2004-2007. Over five years, Olen hid in total $1,184,927 from the Internal Revenue Service.”

The statute provides a sentence of no greater than three years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of $100,000, paying for the cost of his prosecution and paying restitution to the IRS for the cumulative tax losses.