A 50-year old Amer­i­can man ap­peared in fed­er­al court in the state of New Jer­sey yes­ter­day charged with tax eva­sion and fail­ing to file US tax re­turns on near­ly US$4 mil­lion in earn­ings from a casi­no he owned in east Trinidad.David Migliore, a res­i­dent of Brielle, New Jer­sey, sur­ren­dered yes­ter­day morn­ing to spe­cial agents of the IRS-Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion and made his first ap­pear­ance be­fore Judge Mark Falk in Newark.

The US gov­ern­ment al­leges that Migliore owned the Is­land Club casi­no which earned sig­nif­i­cant in­come that he failed to file with the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice (IRS), the US gov­ern­ment agency re­spon­si­ble for col­lect­ing tax­es from Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.The in­dict­ment al­leges that Migliore took af­fir­ma­tive steps to hide the mon­ey gen­er­at­ed by the Is­land Club casi­no from the IRS by stash­ing cash in lo­cal bank ac­counts and then get­ting casi­no em­ploy­ees to wire the mon­ey through West­ern Union.

The US gov­ern­ment al­so al­leges that Migliore at­tempt­ed to con­ceal the source of the funds from the IRS by:

�2 Us­ing un­re­port­ed for­eign bank ac­counts in Trinidad to de­posit per­son­al in­come;

�2 Us­ing US bank ac­counts in the names of com­pa­nies and busi­ness en­ti­ties to re­ceive per­son­al in­come from the casi­no;

�2 Di­rect­ing that in­come from the casi­no be trans­ferred di­rect­ly to in­di­vid­u­als/ven­dors in the US to pay for his per­son­al ex­pens­es;

�2 Di­rect­ing em­ploy­ees of Is­land Club casi­no to send in­come from the casi­no to peo­ple in New Jer­sey via West­ern Union for his ben­e­fit; and

�2 Di­rect­ing peo­ple to pick up cash which was in­come at­trib­uted to him from West­ern Union of­fices in New Jer­sey for his ben­e­fit.

The charges al­lege that the ap­prox­i­mate in­come that Migliore at­tempt­ed to hide amount­ed to US$3.91 mil­lion and the es­ti­mate of his tax de­fi­cien­cy was be­tween US$566,552 and US$1.28 mil­lion for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. The Wash­ing­ton Post re­port­ed last night that Migliore ap­peared in US Dis­trict Court in Newark wear­ing shack­les over a gray suit and open-col­lar white shirt.

Migliore was not called up­on to en­ter a plea and is due to reap­pear in the fed­er­al court next week. He was re­leased on $1 mil­lion bond se­cured by two prop­er­ties and or­dered to sub­mit to elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing. His at­tor­ney told the court hear­ing that Migliore owned the casi­no in Trinidad for about 10 years un­til re­cent­ly but had not been here in years.

Each tax eva­sion count is pun­ish­able by a max­i­mum sen­tence of five years in prison and a fine of US$250,000 up­on con­vic­tion; the oth­er three counts car­ry a one-year max­i­mum sen­tence and a fine of US$100,000, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the US At­tor­ney for the Dis­trict of New Jer­sey. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is due to host a news con­fer­ence to­day to dis­cuss the is­sue of pri­vate mem­bers club reg­u­la­tion of the gam­bling and gam­ing in­dus­try.

Scores of casi­nos have sprung up across Trinidad and To­ba­go in the last decade, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the lax reg­u­la­to­ry regime over the en­ti­ties, which de­scribe them­selves as pri­vate mem­bers clubs in or­der to evade the laws against casi­no gam­bling.The case in New Jer­sey will be close­ly watched by of­fi­cials in Port-of-Spain for ev­i­dence that the casi­no in ques­tion took in TT dol­lars, which were con­vert­ed in­to US dol­lars by a com­pli­ant bank and sent to the US by a mon­ey trans­fer com­pa­ny.

The name of the bank at which Migliore held the US dol­lar ac­count was not re­vealed in the in­dict­ment.