Glendale Heights cigarette shop owner gets six years for tax fraud

The former owner of several suburban tobacco stores, including one in Glendale Heights, was sentenced to more than six years in prison for failing to report almost $5.5 million in state and federal taxes over a nine-year period.

Abbas Ghaddar, 43, formerly of Frankfort, received the sentence Thursday in federal court after pleading guilty in June.

Prosecutors said from 2001 through 2009, Ghaddar failed to pay $4.8 million in sales taxes to the state and another $650,452 to the federal government by underreporting sales at stores he operated in Glendale Heights, Orland Park, Tinley Park, Frankfort and Bradley.

Federal officials said Ghaddar operated the Cigarette House at 1543 Bloomingdale Road in Glendale Heights from 2001 through 2006.

During the nine years he operated the five stores, federal prosecutors said the investigation showed Ghaddar tallied more than $100 million in sales, including at least $60 million in cash receipts. Prosecutors said he deposited less than 1 percent of those cash receipts in his corporate account and declared little, if any, of that revenue on his corporate tax returns.

Prosecutors told the judge that Ghaddar used the unpaid tax revenue to purchase a home and farm in his native country of Lebanon as well as a soccer club. Ghaddar was arrested in Germany in 2009 and extradited to the U.S. in May 2010. Ghaddar’s sentence is 76 months and he has to serve at least 85 percent of it, federal authorities said. He was also required to pay the government the $5.5 million in taxes he owes.