Las Vegas restaurant owner gets 3-year sentence for tax evasion
Raul Gil, one of the most successful restaurantuers in Las Vegas with his Casa Don Juan Mexican eateries and who rose from a rural family farm in Mexico to become a naturalized American citizen, is now headed to federal prison for skimming $5 million in cash and evading federal and state taxes over four years.
A federal judge sentenced Gill to three years and one month in a U.S. penitantiary as recommended by federal prosecutors, who said Gil’s actions resulted in a tax loss of $1.6 million in federal taxes and $445,820 in lost sales taxes for the state of Nevada, court documents show.
Gil, 64, removed cash that his managers had deposited from his restaurants’ safe, including state sales taxes paid by his customers, to support a “lavish lifestyle” and pay for “profitable real estate investments,” prosecutors stated.
now worth $5.2 million, which “could easily have paid his taxes,” prosecutors stated.
His 37-month sentence, along with serving an additional three years of supervised release afterwards and paying more than $2.22 million in restitution, will send “a strong and important message” to other restaurant owners not to skim cash from their businesses, they said in court filings.
The federal complaint claimed Gil evaded federal and state taxes between 2014 and 2018 and from 2012 to 2018 bought at least six properties for $2.19 million that are now worth $5.2 million that “could easily have paid his taxes,” according to prosecutors.
Gil opened his first Casa Don Juan outlet in 1995 on Main Street in downtown, an area now known as the “Arts District,” where it grew in popularity with tourists as well as city and Clark County employees and included throughout its wall portraits and copies of artwork by the renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
He did so well downtown that he expanded with new Casa Don Juan restaurants in Summerlin and Henderson, according to his lawyer’s court filings.
Las Vegas attorneys George Kelesis and Sunethra Muraldhara, in a filing for U.S. District Judge Andrew P. Gordon, said their client “is extremely remorseful for his conduct” and that he “acted out of fear” of losing his businesses and his wife Maria and “from a desire to protect his family and provide for them.”
In a biolgraphical sketch of his life, the lawyers started that Gil was born in 1959 in a small rancho town of Los Reyes in Jocotitlan, Mexico,
A Nevada restaurant owner has been sentenced to just over three years in prison for skimming $5 million dollars in cash sales and filing false federal income tax returns with an overall tax loss of $1.6 million dollars over a five-year period.
Department of Justice officials made the announcement Thursday in a news release.
In addition to the prison sentence, United States District Judge Andrew P. Gordon ordered Raul Gil to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $2,228,943.65 in restitution.
According to court documents, Gil, 64, owned and operated three Casa Don Juan restaurants in Las Vegas.
From 2014 through 2018, Gil instructed his manager/internal bookkeeper to create false sales numbers for his restaurants that under reported cash sales at the restaurants by approximately $5.1 million. Then, Gil provided the false sales records to an outside tax return preparer who prepared his federal income tax returns.
In July 2018, during an audit, DOJ prosecutors said Gil instructed his accountant to provide to the IRS false profit and loss statements that matched the figures reported on the tax returns. Gil also directed his bookkeeper to provide to the IRS false daily cash and sales reports purportedly printed from the restaurants’ point-of-sale systems. During interviews with the IRS, Gil falsely stated to the revenue agent conducting the audit, and later to IRS-Criminal Investigation special agents, that the falsified daily cash reports and point-of-sale records were accurate.
Gil plead guilty in tax evasion in August 2022.
In total, Gil caused a tax loss to the IRS of approximately $1.6 million.