Key West staffing agency manager sentenced for tax fraud

MIAMI – A manager of Key West staffing companies that provided workers to hotels, bars and restaurants has been sentenced to four years in prison on tax and immigration charges.

Volodymyr Ogorodnychuk, of Key West, helped operate Paradise Choice LLC, Paradise Choice Cleaning LLC, Tropical City Services LLC, and Tropical City Group LLC and provided workers who were not authorized to work in the United States to businesses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The department said Ogorodnychuk acknowledged in a plea agreement that Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes were not withheld from the workers’ wages and that the wages were not reported to the Internal Revenue Service.

The department said the IRS was defrauded out of more than $3.5 million in employment taxes.