CALIFORNIA – A tax dodger and owner of a Huntington Beach-based military contractor who plead guilty to federal tax charges for failing to report to the IRS millions of dollars his company received for providing services to the military at Baghdad International Airport was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.
Nadim “Nick” Saifan Jr., 48, of Huntington Beach, plead guilty in May to two counts of attempted tax evasion and specifically admitted that he substantially underreported income on his company’s 2005 corporate tax return and his personal tax return for 2006.
Saifan was the owner and operator of Defense Logistical Support & Services Corporation, which provided services to the military and some civilian companies in Iraq, officials said.
From August 2004 through October 2007, officials said Defense Logistical Support received nearly $16 million from the U.S. military for services in Iraq, according to court documents.
The documents also state Saifan reported only a small fraction of this income on Defense Logistical Support’s corporate tax returns filed with the IRS. In addition, the documents indicated that Saifan used foreign bank accounts, specifically in Lebanon, to conceal his assets and profits from his corporation.
“In addition to failing to report the millions of dollars in taxable income on DLSS Corp.’s tax returns, [Saifan] also used substantial corporate funds for personal purchases and payments to himself, without claiming these distributions and payments as income to himself on his individual tax returns,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo filed with the court.
Saifan used corporate money to make approximately $880,000 in down payments on real estate and approximately $292,000 in payments towards vehicles that included a Ferrari and a Rolls-Royce, officials said.
Saifan has been in federal custody since a judge revoked his bond in May.