A longtime executive for Donald Trump’s business empire has been jailed for five months for dodging taxes on 1.7 million US dollars (£1.4 million) in job perks.
The judge sentencing Allen Weisselberg said the punishment – which the 75-year-old was promised in August when he agreed to admit to 15 tax crimes and be a witness against the Trump Organisation – is probably too soft.
Evidence from Weisselberg helped convict the former US president’s firm, where he has worked since the mid-1980s and served as chief financial officer, of tax fraud.
When he made the sentence official on Tuesday, judge Juan Manuel Merchan said that, after listening to Weisselberg’s evidence during the trial, he regrets the penalty was not tougher.
He said he was especially appalled by evidence Weisselberg gave his wife a 6,000 dollar (£4,934) cheque for a no-show job so she could qualify for social security benefits.
Had he not already promised to give Weisselberg five months behind bars, Mr Merchan said: “I would be imposing a sentence much greater than that.”
He added: “I’m not going to deviate from the promise, though I believe a stiffer sentence is warranted, having heard the evidence.”
Weisselberg, who came to court dressed casually for jail rather than in his usual suit, was handcuffed and taken into custody moments after the sentence was announced.
He was expected to be taken to New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
He will be eligible for release after a little over three months if he behaves behind bars.
As part of the plea agreement, Weisselberg had also been required to pay nearly two million dollars (£1.64 million) in back taxes, penalties and interest — which he has paid.
Additionally, the judge ordered Weisselberg to complete five years of probation after his jail term is finished.
Defence lawyer Nicholas Gravante had asked the judge for a lighter sentence than the one in the plea bargain.
“He has already been punished tremendously by the disgrace that he has brought not only on himself, but his wife, his sons and his grandchildren,” Mr Gravante said.
Weisselberg faced the prospect of up to 15 years in prison — the maximum punishment possible — if he were to have reneged on the deal or if he did not give evidence truthfully at the Trump Organisation’s trial.
He is the only person charged in the Manhattan district attorney’s three-year investigation of Mr Trump and his business practices.
Weisselberg gave evidence for three days, offering a glimpse into the inner workings of Mr Trump’s real estate empire.
Weisselberg has worked for Mr Trump’s family for nearly 50 years, starting as an accountant for his developer father, Fred Trump, in 1973 before joining Donald Trump in 1986 and helping expand the family company’s focus beyond New York City into a global golf and hotel brand.
Weisselberg told jurors he betrayed the Trump family’s trust by conspiring with a subordinate to hide over a decade’s worth of extras from his income, including a free Manhattan apartment, luxury cars and his grandchildren’s private school tuition. He said they fudged payroll records and issued falsified forms.
A Manhattan jury convicted the Trump Organisation in December, finding Weisselberg had been a “high managerial” agent entrusted to act on behalf of the company and its various entities.
Weisselberg’s arrangement reduced his own personal income taxes but also saved the company money because it did not have to pay him more to cover the cost of the perks.
Prosecutors said other Trump Organisation executives also accepted off-the-books compensation.
Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than 900,000 dollars (£740,100) in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.
The Trump Organisation is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday and faces a fine of up to 1.6 million dollars (£1.32 million).
Weisselberg said in evidence that neither Mr Trump nor his family knew about the scheme as it was happening, choking up as he told jurors: “It was my own personal greed that led to this.”
But prosecutors, in their closing argument, said Mr Trump “knew exactly what was going on” and evidence, such as a lease he signed for Weisselberg’s apartment, made it clear “Mr Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud”.
A Trump Organisation lawyer, Michael van der Veen, said Weisselberg concocted the scheme without Mr Trump or the Trump family’s knowledge.
Weisselberg said the Trumps remained loyal to him even as the company scrambled to end some of its dubious pay practices following Mr Trump’s 2016 election.
He said Mr Trump’s eldest sons, entrusted to run the company while Mr Trump was president, gave him a 200,000 dollar (£164,470) raise after an internal audit found he had been reducing his salary and bonuses by the cost of the perks.
Though he is now on a leave of absence, the company continues to pay Weisselberg 640,000 dollars (£526,304) in salary and 500,000 dollars (£411,175) in holiday bonuses.
It punished him only nominally after his arrest in July 2021, reassigning him to senior adviser and moving his office.
He even celebrated his 75th birthday at Trump Tower with cake and colleagues in August, just hours after finalising the plea agreement that ushered his transformation from loyal executive to prosecution witness.
Rikers Island, a compound of 10 jails on a spit of land in the East River, just off the main runway at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, has been plagued in recent years by violence, inmate deaths and staggering staffing shortages.
Though just five miles from Trump Tower, it is a veritable world away from the life of luxury Weisselberg schemed to build — a far cry from the gilded Fifth Avenue offices where he hatched his plot and the Hudson River-view apartment he reaped as a reward.
