Date: May 1, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Newark, NJ — Two roofing company owners were indicted for their failure to file tax returns and pay tax on income, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba announced.
The Indictment charges Steve Mitchell, also known as “Sonny Mitchell,” of Edison, New Jersey, and Samuel Mitchell of Bohemia, New York with four counts each of tax evasion.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
Steve Mitchell, Samuel Mitchell, and others operated roofing businesses under several different names. Despite earning approximately $881,730.26 and $1,397,960.21, respectively, in income from roofing customers from 2018 through 2021, Steve Mitchell and Samuel Mitchell failed to file tax returns with the IRS and pay tax on their income. Instead, Steve Mitchell and Samuel Mitchell took affirmative steps to conceal their income from the IRS, including by providing false social security numbers to check cashing businesses that they used to convert customers’ checks to cash, which prevented the check cashing businesses from reporting the cashed checks to the IRS as required by law.
In addition to the income from the roofing customers, Steve Mitchell also received income from an elderly individual for what the elderly individual thought was an investment in a COVID mask-making business. In 2020 and 2021, Steve Mitchell converted over $4.2 million in checks from the elderly individual into cash.
The tax evasion counts each carry a maximum potentially penalty of five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000.
U.S. Attorney Habba credited special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan, with the investigation leading to the charges.
The government is represented by Assistant U. S. Attorney Casey S. Smith of the Criminal Division in Newark.
The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.