Owners of Lotawata Creek restaurant in Fairview Heights plead guilty to tax fraud
Owners of Lotawata Creek Southern Grill, a restaurant in Fairview Heights, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to charges of tax fraud.
The owners pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to obstruct the IRS in the assessment and collection of federal income taxes, according to a press release issued by Acting U.S. Attorney James L. Porter for the Southern District of Illinois.
The restaurant is owned by two brothers, identified as Rodney Archer, 50, and Kenneth Archer, 52. They both face a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and up to three years supervised release, plus mandatory restitution. The corporation, Lotawata Creek Inc., faces a fine up to $500,000, restitution and five years of probation.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 15. Porter said the owners and the corporation admitted that from 2010 through about July 2015, they “altered and manipulated the information in the restaurant’s point-of-sale system to lower the reported cash sales and then did remove the corresponding amount of cash from the business prior to being deposited and reported as gross receipts.”
Porter said the actions had the effect of lowering the total gross receipts reported on the tax returns and lowered the total taxable income reported to the IRS.
Lotawata Creek Inc. was incorporated in Missouri and was registered as a foreign corporation in Illinois beginning on Feb. 1, 1996. It operates a popular restaurant located at 311 Salem Place in Fairview Heights. It remained open as of Thursday.
The Archers and their attorney were not immediately available for comment Thursday.
The prosecution is the result of an investigation conducted by the Internal Revenue Service/Criminal Investigations. The prosecution of the case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman R. Smith.
Lotawata Creek was closed for a couple months following a fire on June 20. The fire was started by a gas line rupture inside the kitchen. The kitchen was damaged and equipment had to be replaced.
This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Owners of Lotawata Creek restaurant in Fairview Heights plead guilty to tax fraud."