NYC 'Taxi King' Pleads Guilty To Tax Fraud, AG Says

NEW YORK, NY — New York City's longtime "taxi king" has pleaded guilty to tax fraud, state authorities announced Tuesday. Evgeny Freidman, who managed more than 800 cabs in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, was charged with several tax crimes last June for stealing nearly $5 million in 50-cent fees meant to fund the MTA.

Freidman, 46, agreed to pay $5 million in restitution and judgments has part of a plea deal in Albany County Court, the state attorney general's office said.

"Freidman pocketed money that should have provided much-needed investment in our transit system – and he’ll now have to pay back every cent," Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement. "Our office will continue to hold accountable those who cheat the system."

Freidman and his business partner, Andreea Dumitru, ran in Taxiclub Management Inc., a company that oversaw four taxi management agencies, prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, Freidman and Dumitru operated a scheme between 2012 and 2015 in which they failed to file returns, filed returns improperly, submitted returns that underreported the number of rides that were subject to the 50-cent MTA tax, and failed to remit the tax on filed returns.

That allowed them to keep the money collected from passengers that they were supposed to fork over to the state, prosecutors said.

Freidman was reportedly a business partner of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney who is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

As part of his plea deal, Freidman agreed to cooperate with federal and state investigators as a potential witness, which could give authorities more sway over Cohen in an effort to push him to work with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Freidman pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree criminal tax fraud and officially admitted to withholding $50,000 in taxes from January 2015 through Feb. 4, 2016, prosecutors said.

He'll be sentenced to five years of probation if he meets the terms of his plea deal, prosecutors said.

Freidman was stripped of his taxi medallions and his law license last year, according to the New York Post. Prosecutors said the charges against Dumitru, his business partner, are still pending.

(Lead image: Photo from Shutterstock / Kobby Dagan)