A former Virginia business executive has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for withholding more than $3.1 million in income and payroll taxes from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Richard Moore, former executive vice president and part-owner of Nexus Services Inc. in Verona, repeatedly deducted income taxes from employee wages between 2015 and 2024 but failed to turn the money over to the IRS or file the required tax returns, prosecutors said.
Moore oversaw Nexus’s financial and business operations, including hiring, firing, paying company bills, and filing employment taxes, according to court documents. Despite this responsibility, Moore allegedly withheld federal trust fund taxes — which include income, Social Security and Medicare taxes — on multiple occasions from April 2014 through January 2021, but never reported or paid them to the IRS.
In total, Moore withheld $1.87 million in trust fund taxes between 2015 and 2020. Even after his December 2021 federal indictment for failing to pay those funds, prosecutors say Moore continued to withhold an additional $377,652 between 2022 and 2024, still without remitting the money or filing required paperwork.
Court records also reveal that Moore spent millions of Nexus’s funds on personal expenses, including:
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More than $501,000 on luxury car payments for three Ferraris, three Maseratis, two BMWs and a Mercedes-Benz
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Over $1.1 million to write, publish and promote a book authored by his spouse, who is also a Nexus co-owner
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More than $573,000 on personal wedding expenses in 2016
The DOJ noted that Nexus co-founder Michael Donovan controlled 51% of the company’s shares, while co-owner Evan Ajin was also listed as a defendant.
In addition to his prison sentence, Moore was ordered to pay more than $3 million in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release after his incarceration.
This sentencing follows another federal case involving Moore, Nexus, and its subsidiary Libre, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the attorneys general of Virginia, Massachusetts and New York accused of misleading and exploiting ICE detainees. The court found that Libre engaged in “deceptive, abusive, and fraudulent conduct” in its immigration bond services.
Nexus, Libre, and all three co-owners — Moore, Donovan and Ajin — were ordered to pay more than $230 million in consumer redress and over $555 million in civil penalties, according to court documents.
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