Array
Donald Trump’s real-estate and golf-resort empire, the Trump Organization, was hit with a $1.6 million fine in state court in Manhattan on Friday, during the company’s sentencing for it’s December conviction on payroll-tax fraud.
The fine is the maximum allowed under New York State law, and came with harsh words from a Manhattan prosecutor.
The company “cultivated a pervasive culture of fraud,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass, one of two lead prosecutors in the case, told the judge in asking successfully for the maximum fine.
As high as it is, the fine is still far less than what the company made in the scheme, according to the prosecution’s evidence.
That means that Trump — the company’s sole owner and beneficiary — still comes out ahead.
“I want to be very clear, we don’t think that is enough,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said of New York’s top fraud fines, which limits criminal tax counts to a maximum of $250,o00 per count, and crimes under the state penal-code counts to only $10,000 per count.
“Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus, systemic, egregious fraud,” he told reporters.
Trump saved millions in payroll costs over the course of the decade-long scheme, Manhattan prosecutors have repeatedly argued.
