MADISON, Wis. — The owner of a video gaming machine company was sentenced to federal prison Friday after partaking in a tax evasion scheme.
Mary Lavine, 65, of Madison was sentenced to one year and one day in prison after pleading guilty, according to U.S. Attorney Scott C. Blader’s office. Lavine will serve a two-year term of supervised release as well.
She was fined $75,000 for evading more than $3 million in taxes. Lavine was also ordered to pay restitution of $834,769.65 to the IRS and $1,927,852.56 to the state Department of Revenue.
Officials said Lavine ran Bullseye, Inc. with another person who has since died. Bullseye was a coin-operated music and amusement game vending business in Madison.
Lavine placed VGMs at bars and would split the profits generated by the machines with bar owners. Lavine admitted to working with certain owners to skim cash receipts from the VGMs and not report all the receipts to the IRS or DOR.
By underreporting the receipts, the company evaded more than $3 million of its own corporate income taxes between 2015 and 2018.
Lavine said she took part in the tax evasion scheme as long as she did because the other owner of Bullseye had promised to make her the business’ majority owner before going back on the promise.
A total of five people have pleaded guilty to the criminal tax investigation, with Lavine the fourth to be sentenced.
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