A Greensboro, North Carolina, business owner pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia to filing a fraudulent tax return, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Zuckerman of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle for the Western District of Virginia.

According to documents and information provided to the court, David A. Crowley, 57, owned and operated Southern Logistics and Environmental LLC (SLE), a waste management and disposal company. From 2006 through 2013, SLE contracted with a television retail company to dispose of cosmetic products that were returned by its customers. Instead of destroying and disposing of the number of products as required under the contract, Crowley provided the returned cosmetics to other individuals, who then sold the products through online marketplaces. In exchange for supplying the merchandise, Crowley received a portion of the sales. Crowley did not report the proceeds he received from the returned cosmetic product sales on his income tax returns for 2006 through 2013; for 2011 he did not file an income tax return at all. For these tax years, Crowley received and did not report $3,331,341 from the returned cosmetic product sales, causing a tax loss to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of $895,654.

A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled. Crowley faces a statutory maximum sentence of three years in prison, a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Zuckerman and Acting U.S. Attorney Mountcastle commended special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation, who conducted the investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlene Day and Trial Attorney Daniel McGraw of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting the case.

Additional information about the Tax Division’s enforcement efforts can be found on the division’s website.