Former Philadelphia Restaurant Owner Sentenced to 15 Months For Tax Fraud

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced today that Matthew Swartz, 50, of Fairmount, West Virginia, was sentenced to 15 month’s imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $486,000 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Treasury.

In November 2020, the defendant pleaded guilty before United States District Court Judge Timothy J. Savage to failing to pay employee withholding taxes to the IRS from his employees’ taxes in 2014.  Swartz, the owner of a group of Philadelphia area restaurants operating as the Grainery Group, was personally responsible for preparing the payroll for the company. As part of that responsibility, he prepared payroll stubs for employees that represented that taxes had been withheld from their pay and paid over to the IRS. In fact, Swartz did not pay to the IRS the taxes he withheld from the employee’s pay. As part of a plea agreement, Swartz acknowledged that he had failed to pay over withholding for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013, in addition to the charged conduct in the 2014 tax year.

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Richard Barrett.