FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
October 5, 2000
Becky Smalley
(302)577-8667
rsmalley@state.de.us
J. Patrick Hurley
Deputy Attorney General
(302) 577-8685 in Wilm.
WILMINGTON, De.-- Patrick T. Carter, Acting Director of Revenue, announced that Robert O. Wright, president of the House of Wright Mortuary, Inc., entered a guilty plea today in Superior Court to two misdemeanor tax offenses. Wright was immediately sentenced by Judge Norman A. Barron to two years probation. Wright agreed to repay $50,899 as restitution to the Division of Revenue.
Wright pleaded guilty to two counts of Fraud and False Statements in filing Delaware personal income tax by understating his taxable income for tax years 1995 and 1996, in violation of 30 Delaware Code, Section 574.
Wright had been indicted on August 30, 1999 by the Grand Jury for the Superior Court in New Castle County on tax evasion charges and was scheduled for trial on October 11, 2000.
The charges against Wright, a Centreville resident and president of the House of Wright Mortuary, a Wilmington funeral home, stem from an investigation by the Division of Revenue's Criminal Investigations Unit.
The investigation revealed that Wright, for tax years 1995 and 1996, underpaid over $23,000 of personal and corporate income tax by underreporting his personal and corporate taxable income by over $312,000. The investigation discovered that Wright diverted substantial corporate funds from the House of Wright and used the funds to pay purely personal expenses which Wright failed to declare as income on his personal tax return.
Wright also deposited business receipts into his personal account to hide business income for the tax years in question, and failed to report those monies on his personal returns for the same years. Wright filed and signed his personal returns knowing they were not true and correct in an attempt to avoid paying the tax.
"Fairness to honest law-abiding taxpayers requires that where intentional evasion is determined to exist, as it did with Mr. Wright, the Division of Revenue responds forcefully to bring the tax evader to the full measure of justice," Patrick Carter concluded.