Two Charlotte-area home repairmen have been handed prison sentences for tax evasion related to earnings from a scheme that preyed on the elderly, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina revealed. The men, identified as David Angelo Quick, 43, and Tony Joshua Christo, 34, entered guilty pleas to filing a false tax return. Quick received a 20-month sentence with an additional year of supervised release and is to pay $296,300 in restitution to the IRS, while Christo was sentenced to 15 months, plus one year of supervised release and ordered to pay $227,548 to the IRS. This outcome follows an investigation spearheaded by the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Charlotte Field Office, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
The case, according to the U.S. Attorney's office, stems from a period between 2018 and 2021 during which Quick and Christo offered home and car repair services primarily to elderly clients, failing to report a collective income of over $1.5 million. Quick, who was not a licensed contractor, operated David Quick Home Improvements and Christo occasionally worked alongside him. The authorities detailed how Quick would initially convince the elderly in supermarket parking lots to let him fix their cars, only to eventually persuade them to also have to contract him for exaggerated and unnecessary home repairs.
An elaborate fraud was revealed in court records which showed that the repairmen deliberately overcharged their elderly customers for services, such as painting garage floors, paving driveways, and replacing windows. The duo then purposely neglected to report these payments as income on their federal tax returns. These details came forward as part of the powerful collaborative effort of IRS-CI and USPIS to bring justice in such financially predatory cases.
"These defendants preyed on elderly victims and then compounded their crimes by failing to pay their fair share of taxes on the income they received from their fraudulent scheme," stated U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson as quoted in documents filed with the court. In a continuing push to protect the vulnerable and uphold the law, the investigation by federal agencies has ensured that the perpetrators will soon report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, once a facility has been designated for their incarceration. Assistant U.S. Attorney Caryn Finley prosecuted the case, signaling a clear message: exploitation and evasion will simply not stand.
