For the second time in as many days, a person with connections to a Peabody-based business has been arrested and is facing charges in federal court.
Argynios “Eric” Mavros, 56, in his capacity as the owner of the Peabody construction company Mavros Construction, Inc., was arrested Wednesday in connection with a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service of approximately $1 million in payroll taxes. He also faces charges that he defrauded his workers’ compensation insurance carrier by failing to disclose how many workers he employed.
Mavros was indicted on 10 counts of failure to collect or pay over taxes and one count of mail fraud. He was released on unspecified conditions following an initial appearance in federal court in Boston.
According to the company’s Articles of Organization filed February, 2009 with the Corporations Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Mihaela A. Mavros, 14 Gardner St. Peabody, was listed as the company’s registered agent, president, treasurer, secretary and sole director. The company’s address was also filed as 14 Gardner St., Peabody. State records on file indicate that the company was involuntarily dissolved by the Secretary of the Commonwealth on June 30, 2017.
According to federal-court filings, Mavros, while owning Mavros Construction, Inc., allegedly cashed more than $3.3 million in customer checks at a Peabody check-cashing business and used some of those funds to pay his employees in cash.
Mavros failed to report those employees or the wages they earned on quarterly corporate tax filings allegedly in an effort to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on employee wages and to avoid his obligation as an employee to withhold federal income taxes from those wages. Overall, Mavros is alleged to have failed to pay and withhold federal taxes on more than $2.5 million in wages, resulting in a tax loss of just over $1 million. Additionally, Mavros failed to report these employees to his workers’ compensation insurance carrier, thereby defrauding his insurer of workers compensation insurance premiums as required by law.
The charge of failure to collect and pay taxes on employee wages provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $10,000. The charge of mail fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 or, twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater.
Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling and Joleen Simpson, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation in Boston made the announcement. Assistance was provided by the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen A. Kearney of Lelling’s Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit is prosecuting the case.