Ex-CEO at Jacksonville software company admits tax evasion in plea ending wire-fraud case
The former CEO of a Jacksonville software company pleaded guilty to tax evasion Friday after two years of prosecution on fraud charges that involved claims he’d embezzled from his company.
Jason Cory took a plea agreement that acknowledged about $606,000 in evaded taxes and committed him to restitution terms that U.S. Magistrate Laura Lothman Lambert noted for their detail.
“Have you told the truth today?” the judge asked Cory, who had been part of founding the firm SharedLabs Inc. in 2016 and negotiated government incentives to move 107 employees into downtown.
“I have,” answered Cory, 49, who had been replaced as the company’s leader by 2019. The firm, which was never mentioned by name in the agreement, changed its name the next year to RiseIT Solutions, Inc. and has moved its headquarters to a Dallas suburb.
Cory was indicted on wire fraud charges in July 2020, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged that he had been stealing from the company by issuing unearned checks to another firm, Gambit Matrix LLC, that was his personal shell company.
Prosecutors doubled down on their claims in January with a new eight-count indictment that said he cheated on his taxes as well as faking a consulting contract with Gambit, making up invoices and creating online personas of make-believe Gambit owners for SharedLabs employees to deal with.
Prosecutors took those claims off the table this month by replacing the indictments with a single-count charge that simply said Cory tried to evade paying taxes by “causing payments of illegitimate income to be made to a bank account he held in the name of a shell company he controlled.”
The change reduced the maximum potential sentence Cory could face to five years in prison, while the multiple wire fraud counts in the earlier charges carried a maximum potential term of 20 years behind bars.
Cory's actual sentence will be decided months from now by U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, to whom the magistrate will recommend approving the guilty plea.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville IT exec pleads guilty to tax evasion, ends wire-fraud case
