Downers Grove man gets year in prison for underreporting taxes

The owner of a Downers Grove construction company was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for manipulating records resulting in an underpayment of more than $260,000 in taxes over two years, according to prosecutors.

Robert W. Conforti, 65, was also ordered to pay $260,903 in restitution for underreporting his business income in 2005 and 2006.

The defendant, who owned Conforti Construction Co., was indicted in April on two counts of filing false federal income tax returns, and he pleaded guilty to one count in September.

Prosecutors say Conforti occasionally took cash from his business by writing it off as false business expenses. He also wrote checks payable to subcontractors and later cashed them at a currency exchange, according to prosecutors.

He is accused of creating numerous false financial records to hide the underreporting of the firm's receipts and of inflating the expenses by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Authorities say he provided those false records showing a net business loss to an accountant.

Conforti will begin serving his sentence on March 1.