Hotel Cleaning Company Owners Plead Guilty
Jennifer Billock April 17, 2017
The two owners of a hotel cleaning business pled guilty for doing dirty work in the company records.
Owners of Good Neighbor Services, a luxury hotel cleaning business based in Irvine, California, are facing jail time as a result of insurance and tax fraud. Hyok “Steven” Kwon and his wife, Woo “Stephanie” Kwon, managed to conceal about 800 employees over about a ten-year period in order to skip paying workers’ compensation and payroll taxes. The couple managed to avoid about $7 million in tax payments. Good Neighbor Services worked in hotels including Hotel Del Coronado, the Loews Coronado, La Costa Resort and Spa, the Grand Del Mar, L’Auberge Del Mar, The Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, and the Hilton and Hyatt hotel chains, The San Diego Union-Tribune said.
Both the Kwons pleaded guilty last month. Steven received an 8-year sentence in state prison, and Stephanie got six years and eight months. She is now out after serving a bit of her sentence in prison, and is instead finishing out the years under mandatory supervision. She also had to give up about $398,000 in cashier’s checks according to her plea agreement, which will go right to the government for the money they owe. They need to pay the government back about $6.3 million.
The couple’s children and five others have also pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing on August 22.
“When cheaters scam insurance companies, and lie their way out of paying premium taxes, ordinary citizens end up footing the bill,” District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said at a news conference reported by the Union-Tribune.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
