Livingston

Livingston

Former Second in Command at Kushner Companies Sentenced to 38 Months in Prison for Conspiring to Defraud the United States

Richard Stadtmauer, former second-in-command at the Kushner Companies, was sentenced to 38 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and costs of the prosecution totaling approximately $20,000.  Stadtmauer was convicted in June 2008 of participating in a criminal conspiracy spanning the years 1997 to 2003, as well as eight counts of aiding and assisting in the filing of false tax returns. According to the evidence introduced at trial, Stadtmauer and other co-conspirators created false partnership tax returns for the real estate properties controlled by the Kushner Companies. These returns intentionally mischaracterized more than $6 million worth of charitable and political contributions, capital expenditures, and gift-and-entertainment charges as fully deductible business expenses. The returns also falsely characterized as business expenses, expenditures that in fact were not related to the properties at all, including expenditures made by Kushner and Stadtmauer personally. The charged co-conspirators in the scheme – all of whom have pleaded guilty over the last several years – included Charles Kushner, former Kushner Companies Chief Financial Officers Marci Plotkin and Scott Zecher, and Stanley Bekritsky, a former tax partner at the accounting firm of Schonbraun Safris McCann & Bekritsky, which during the time of the conspiracy served as the Kushner Companies’ outside accountants. Kushner was sentenced on March 4, 2005, to 24 months in prison; Marci Plotkin, Stanley Bekritsky, and Scott Zecher have not been sentenced yet.