A Frankford private investigator was sentenced to 21 months in prison last week for hiding more than $2 million of income from the IRS.
Yaser Khalil “Mike” Masso, 71, of Philadelphia, also was ordered to pay $429,070 in restitution, including interest to the IRS for under-reporting the income that he earned from his detective agency.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Philadelphia office, Masso filed false returns for tax years 2006 through 2009, substantially under-reporting his income from his business, the Masso Detective Agency, which operates on the 1600 block of Margaret St. in Frankford.
For tax years 2006 through 2009, Masso reported a total of $454,579 of taxable income, but did not report an additional $2.1 million in taxable income.
Despite having access to bank accounts, Masso routinely cashed checks for significant dollar amounts from his business receipts at check cashing stores, paying additional fees to do so, but thereby hiding income. Masso did deposit some business checks in his bank accounts — but (with one exception) he deposited checks only for amounts over $10,000, which, if cashed at a check casher, would have generated a Currency Transaction Report and would have been reported to the government. ••
