Southern California business owner defrauded millions from clients, evaded taxes
A Southern California man pleaded guilty to defrauding over $5 million from clients and evading more than $1 million in taxes.
Frank Seung Noah, 64, of Corona, is a customs broker who works with businesses to ship their goods into the U.S. from other countries, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Noah owned and operated Comis International Inc., a Cerritos-based logistics and supply-chain company offering customs import brokerage services, court documents said.
From 2007 to 2019, Noah's company was a customs import broker for Daiso, a Japan-based discount chain without locations throughout the U.S.
During that time, prosecutors said Noah provided Daiso with false customs duty forms and invoices to collect false reimbursement for duty fees. The forms he provided to Daiso were different from the ones provided to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Through this method, Daiso had overpaid Noah nearly $3.4 million, prosecutors said.
He was indicted for defrauding Daiso in 2022, but he continued scamming other clients out of more than $2 million using a different scheme.
He collected money from two client companies and instead of paying their customs fees, he pocketed the funds instead. CBP notified the companies of their unpaid taxes. They asked Noah for an explanation and he sent over false bank statements to show he had paid the fees.
Prosecutors said Noah also evaded paying federal taxes, resulting in a loss to the IRS of around $2.4 million, with penalties and interest continuing to accrue.
'After agreeing with the IRS that he owed more than $1 million in taxes in 2014, Noah actively avoided IRS attempts to collect the amount owed,' court documents said. 'This included paying for two homes in his former girlfriend's name, using check cashing businesses to avoid IRS levies of his bank accounts, lying to IRS collection agents, and spending thousands of dollars on country club memberships, travel, and golf purchases.'
On Feb. 7, Noah pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and two counts of wire fraud.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 8 where he faces up to 20 years in prison for each wire fraud count and up to five years in federal prison for the tax evasion count.
The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations with the assistance of United States Customs and Border Protection.
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