Tobacco store owner gets 6 years for hiding $60M

The owner of a chain of south suburban tobacco shops was sentenced to more than six years in prison for hiding and failing to report more than $60 million in cash receipts from his business.

Abbas Ghaddar, 43, was also ordered to pay more than $5.45 million in back taxes for the scheme that helped fund his lavish lifestyle in Lebanon, where he built a luxurious home, purchased a farm worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and became the successful owner of a soccer club, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Receipts from Ghaddar’s Tobacco House Inc. stores showed that they generated more than $102 million in gross revenues, at least $60 million of which were cash receipts.

But Ghaddar deposited less than 1 percent of that into his corporate bank accounts and declared little, if any, on his corporate tax returns, prosecutors said. He also filed false federal income tax returns from 2003-05; failed to file returns from 2006-08; and filed false sales tax returns with the state from 2002-09. Ghaddar pleaded guilty in June.