All Bai Tong restaurants — including the one at 12th and Pike — will remain open as its owners have received jail sentences for “tax zapper software” fraud.
CHS reported on the guilty pleas of Kent residents Pornchai Chaiseeha, 41, and Chadillada Lapangkura, 40, in August to the charge of conspiracy to defraud the government.
According to U.S. District Court documents, the Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation and Homeland Security found that point of sales software used to hide cash transactions was installed at Bai Tong restaurants off the Hill since at least 2010. The chain has operated restaurants in Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii, including four Bai Tongs around Seattle and the Eastside. Prosecutors say the point of sales software had an added “cash suppression” or “Zapper” program that “modifies the sales records by removing cash sales from the business records.”
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The restaurants earned $1,034,750 in cash income that was never reported on state or federal tax returns, resulting in an agreed tax loss of $299,806, according to the DOJ. Prosecutors say the pair also used the unreported cash to pay employees under the table and some of the cash proceeds were “siphoned off” to bank accounts in Thailand.
Following the August guilty pleas, Lapangkura was sentenced this month to six months in prison while Chaiseeha was sentenced to four months. As part of the plea deal, the Bai Tong owners agreed to pay $299,806 in state and federal taxes.
“They came to this country, a land of opportunity… and then didn’t pay their taxes, and got rich,” U.S. District Judge James L. Robart said at the sentencing hearing, according to the DOJ’s announcement of the end of proceedings in the case.
A representative for the company tells CHS all Bai Tong locations will remain open despite the convictions and sentencings.
The imbalance in jail time for white collar vs other lesser crimes is obscene. Someone who breaks into a restaurant and steals 5 grand would get more time than someone who runs the restaurant and defrauds the government (and the resulting government services) of hundreds of thousands. Because white collar runs the justice system. Plus they got away with it for years in this case. So enforcement was weak and late in the first place.
You have it backwards. The vast majority of theft in Seattle isn’t even prosecuted. Just Uwajimaya alone had 261 cases in 2018 in which the shoplifter was caught or recorded on video. Only 12 cases out of the original 261 — 4% — resolved in a way anyway near approaching accountability—mainly “diversion” programs. Not even jail time. Beyond that, illegally keeping more of your own money isn’t nearly the moral crime of forcibly taking someone else’s money.
Except they aren’t keeping their own money. They are collecting 10.1% sales tax from their customers which they are then supposed to turn over to the state on their behalf. This is not their money. It’s their customer’s tax dollars. They are stealing from both their customers and the State, which of course is the people. This is far more amoral than someone shoplifting some food. It’s just pure greed. These are wealthy people cheating the system to become more wealthy. Period.
@Iluvcaphill “Except they aren’t keeping their own money. ” Yes, they are. Removing cash purchases from invoices reduces their tax exposure, allowing them to keep more of their own profits…in addition to the 10.1% sales tax collected from customers. BTW, the restaurant owners are going to prison and paying hundreds of thousands in restitution. That’s far more than you can say for the vast majority of Seattle’s army of “blue collar” thieves.
Hmm maybe I will patronize other Thai restaurants that don’t try to defraud us…