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MANHATTAN---Manhattan art gallery owner Helen Fioratti and her corporation have pleaded guilty to failing to collect sales taxes from 1999 to 2004.
Fioratti, as president of a corporation known as L'Antiquaire and the Connoisseur, Inc., operated an art gallery of the same name, located at 36 East 73rd Street in Manhattan. According to the criminal court complaints, Fioratti and her corporation devised and executed a long-standing scheme to enable their customers to evade the payment of sales taxes on the art work they purchased. On numerous occasions, Fioratti and the corporation sent worthless items, like catalogues, to out of state addresses to create records making it appear that the art itself was shipped out of state, all the while allowing the customers to have the actual works sent to their residences within New York.
In this manner, prosecutors said that Fioratti and her corporation deprived the city and state of sales tax on hundreds of thousands of dollars of art work.
As part of their agreement to plead guilty, Fioratti and the corporation have agreed to pay tax owed, together with interest and penalties, totaling $635,083.40. The defendants have also agreed to pay fines totaling $15,000.
The corporation has pleaded guilty to two counts of Tax Law violations and one count of offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree, all class E felonies. Fioratti has also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of Tax Law. The
defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 5. Under the plea agreement, the district attorney will not ask the Court to impose a sentence of incarceration for Fioratti.
Previously, on Feb. 3, 2004, as the result of a separate prosecution, James Sansum, who had once been an employee of L'Antiquaire, pleaded guilty to evading income taxes, falsifying business records, and stealing art work. He is awaiting sentence. 11-18-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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