The former owner of Sandy’s, the popular seasonal restaurant and bar on Plymouth’s Long Beach, was sentenced Friday to two years of probation after pleading guilty to tax evasion.
Rudolph Ferrucci, 66, of Plymouth, who owned the cash-only Sandy’s, was accused of concealing business income from the Internal Revenue Service – nearly $1.2 million between tax years 2016 and 2020, according to US Attorney Joshua Levy.
He also failed to report more than $300,000 in cash wages paid to employees during that period, resulting in additional unpaid taxes, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors asked U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to sentence Ferrucci to one year in federal prison.
But the judge instead accepted Ferrucci’s lawyer’s recommendation — two years’ probation, with the first six months to be served under home confinement. He also received 400 hours of community service and a $5,500 fine.
In a sentencing memorandum, Mark Pearlstein, who represented Ferrucci, called him a “kind, generous, hard-working and compassionate” man” who is filled with “remorse and shame over what he has done.”
He had no previous experience as a restaurateur and “foolishly continued the prior owner’s illegal practice of not depositing all of the cash receipts in Sandy’s bank account,” Pearlstein wrote.
Instead, he put the cash in a cardboard box in his basement.
“Rudy’s actions were not motivated by greed or a desire to live extravagantly,” his lawyer wrote. “In fact, most of the skimmed cash that went into the box, which totaled more than $435,000 when it was seized by the IRS in November 2021, never left that box.”
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.