2 Ohio Men Face Prison Time for Illegal Gambling, Tax Evasion
Steven Saris
Two Ohio men were sentenced Thursday by a federal judge after they were found to be running illegal gambling businesses and avoiding paying taxes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Steven Saris was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Donald C. Nugent of the Northern District of Ohio to more than seven years in prison for financial and tax crimes related to owning and operating an illegal gambling business for over a decade, avoiding millions in taxes.
According to court documents, Saris operated illegal gambling businesses in Ohio and Florida from 2009 to 2022, and took steps to hide his involvement in the businesses and income earned from them by destroying business records, resulting in him avoiding over $2.8 million in taxes.
Saris failed to report more than $1.4 million in income he received from his illegal gambling businesses when he filed a falsified tax return for the 2015 tax year, according to a DOJ news release. For the five tax years following 2015, he failed to file any tax returns even though he earned more than $9 million from his ventures, and made only two payments to the Internal Revenue Service during that time, the DOJ said.
Saris used the income he earned from the illegal gambling businesses to wager millions of dollars at legal casinos and renovate residential properties in Canton, Ohio, the DOJ said.
In addition to his prison sentence, Saris was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay over $2.8 million in back taxes.
In a separate news release on Thursday, the DOJ announced that Judge Nugent had sentenced Jason Kachner of Canton to a 20-month prison sentence for similar crimes. Kachner and co-conspirators ran two illegal gambling operations and earned more than $4 million in income from wagers placed at their businesses, resulting in a tax loss of nearly $850,000 for the federal government, according to the DOJ.
Both Kachner and Saris attempted to conceal their involvement in their illegal gambling businesses by using nominee owners, according to the DOJ.
The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Counsel information for Saris and Kachner wasn’t immediately available.
—Editing by Neil Cohen and Karin Roberts.
