Lowell area businessman charged with filing false tax returns

BOSTON — The former manager of a Lowell temporary employment agency has been arrested and charged with tax crimes that deprived the U.S. Treasury of $980,000.

Siharath Panyanouvong, 56, of Dunstable, was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of aiding and assisting in the preparation and filing of a false tax return. Panyanouvong was arrested Thursday and was arraigned. He pleaded not guilty.

According to the charging documents, Panyanouvong was the manager of Viscosity Inc. It is alleged that, between about 2017 and 2019, Panyanouvong deliberately failed to report more than $3.5 million of Viscosity’s gross receipts to the IRS. As a result, Viscosity allegedly avoided paying more than $980,000 in federal income taxes.

The indictment alleges that Panyanouvong, often using the alias “Mike Pan,” cashed more than $4.5 million in customer checks. Panyanouvong allegedly used a substantial portion of the cash to operate an off-the-books cash payroll for Viscosity employees and to pay himself.

Panyanouvong’s attorney, Stan Norkunas of Tyngsboro, said, “It’s a tax issue that I think a lot of small businesses encounter,” saying that oftentimes when people who don’t have a long business history start a business, they may not be that well versed in proper accounting practices. “Sometimes they pay in cash, so was all of this properly reported? They may have been unsure, ‘How do I report this, how do I report that?’”

“I’ll obviously bring in a financial expert to look at this,” Norkunas said, adding that it will be several weeks before all of the information is fully shared between the prosecutors and his office.

“If they’re right, they’re right,” Norkunas said about whether the taxes were misfiled. “If they’re wrong, we’re going to press them all the way through.”

The charge of aiding and assisting in the filing of false tax returns provides for a sentence of up to three years in prison, up to one year of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.

U.S. Attorney Leah Foley and Thomas Demeo, acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigations in Boston, made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin A. Saltzman of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit is prosecuting the case.

Panyanouvong was released on conditions with another appearance in federal court in Boston set for April 22.