Illinois businessman gets 4 years for $8M payroll tax scheme

TROY, Ill. — A southern Illinois business owner has been sentenced to four years in prison for withholding more than $8 million in payroll taxes from employee paychecks to help "build his empire," federal authorities said.

Gary Hunsche was also sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of supervised release. He had pleaded guilty in May to willfully failing to pay millions of dollars in federal payroll taxes.

Hunsche, 56, was the owner-operator of Unique Personnel Consultants, a Troy-based staffing company with between 3,000 and 5,000 temporary workers who were outsourced to clients.

In pleading guilty, he acknowledged that between 2011 and 2016, he withheld federal income taxes, Medicare and Social Security taxes totaling $8 million from employees' paychecks without turning those funds over to the Internal Revenue Service, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.

Read more: https://thesouthern.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/illinois-businessman-gets-4-years-for-8m-payroll-tax-scheme/article_ddde273d-2782-515b-83c8-8ac7f1bf2fd1.html