Jacksonville building contractor Hugo Cruz-Medina was sentenced Feb. 25 to serve three years and five months in federal prison for conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud and conspiring to defraud the United States and illegally reentering the U.S. after previously being deported.
As part of his sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Brian Davis, Cruz-Medina, 33, is ordered to pay his victims $3,266,506.33 in restitution and a money judgment of $1,408,712.08 was entered, the proceeds of the mail and wire fraud conspiracy.
Cruz-Medina pleaded guilty Sept. 29.
According to court documents, Cruz-Medina, acting with others, operated a construction contracting business that partially paid workers “off the books.”
Cruz-Medina is listed by the state Division of Corporations as president of H&S Framing LLC at 11990 Beach Blvd.
By compensating employees with a mix of checks and cash, he and his co-conspirators avoided withholding the full amount of payroll taxes owed to the government. That practice led to a loss to the U.S. Treasury of $1,857,794.25, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
By underreporting the number of hours his laborers worked, Cruz-Medina also defrauded his company’s workers’ compensation insurer and payroll management vendors, all of which relied on his false reporting to calculate the cost of their services and the amounts that they charged. That act caused an additional loss of $1,408,712.08 to the insurer and the payroll companies.
Cruz-Medina is a citizen of Mexico and was deported from the U.S. in 2012. He later illegally reentered the country.
The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General and the Florida Department of Financial Services.
It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Coolican.