A former Virginia business owner has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for withholding more than $3.1 million in employee income taxes from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.
Richard Moore, previously the executive vice president and part-owner of Nexus Services Inc. — a Verona-based company that provides financial services for detained immigrants — withheld tax payments from employee wages between 2015 and 2024 but failed to remit the funds to the IRS or file required returns.
According to court records, Moore oversaw Nexus’s business and financial operations, including hiring, firing, daily management, and paying company expenses. From April 2014 to January 2021, he repeatedly withheld trust fund taxes — which include income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes — from employee paychecks without reporting or submitting the funds to federal authorities.
Investigators found that Moore withheld approximately $1.87 million in trust fund taxes from 2015 to 2020. Even after he was indicted in December 2021 for willfully failing to account for and pay over these taxes, he continued the scheme, withholding an additional $377,652 between 2022 and 2024.
Court documents also reveal that Moore spent millions of dollars of Nexus’s funds on personal expenses, including:
-
Over $501,000 on luxury vehicle payments for Ferraris, Maseratis, BMWs and a Mercedes-Benz
-
More than $1.1 million to write, publish, and promote a book authored by his spouse, who co-owned Nexus
-
Over $573,000 for personal wedding expenses in August 2016
Nexus co-founders Michael Donovan and Evan Ajin were also named in related filings. Donovan held a 51% ownership stake in the company.
In addition to the prison sentence, Moore was ordered to pay more than $3 million in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release upon completing his sentence.
The DOJ also highlighted a separate case involving Libre, a Nexus subsidiary. Federal regulators and attorneys general in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York found that Libre targeted Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees with a business model built on “deceptive, abusive, and fraudulent conduct.” Libre, Nexus, and all three owners — Moore, Donovan, and Ajin — were ordered to pay over $230 million in consumer redress and more than $555 million in civil penalties.
Leave a Comment