New Jersey-Philadelphia pizza scion Frank Santucci Sr. admitted Thursday to hiding $4.8 million in income from his eponymous eatery over four years, depriving the IRS of nearly $375,000 in tax revenue.
Santucci, the owner of Santucci’s Original Square Pizza, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of tax evasion and two counts of filing false tax returns, The Star-Ledger reported, citing court records.
The 66-year-old pizza patriarch’s plea comes with a maximum 16 years of prison and a $1 million fine when he’s sentenced on Nov. 3.
Prosecutors alleged that Santucci maintained two sets of financial records from 2015 to 2018 for one of their locations, according to Axios Philadelphia, which first reported the charges. One set held income, payroll and expenses, while the other contained the restaurants’ cash earnings.
Santucci, who had taken over the business from his parents in 1976, bypassed the restaurants’ official books to hide cash sales from the company’s tax preparers, prosecutors said.
The now-retired Santucci was released from jail Thursday on $50,000 recognizance bail after promising to seek mental health services, undergo drug and alcohol treatment, relinquish his passport, hand over all firearms and stay in New Jersey.
His attorney, Richard Fuschino, told The Star-Ledger that his client’s actions bore no relation to the current business and that he’s “dealing with a mistake from the past, but the business he built is focused on the future.”
Santucci’s has been serving slices and pies for more than 65 years, growing from a small family business founded in Philly in 1959 to a 15-shop institution with locations in and around the city, and in New Jersey. The eatery also holds a spot in the Pizza Hall of Fame, and Eater Philadelphia calls the Santuccis one of Philly’s two “royal families of pie.”
