The former owner of bicycle shops in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach that catered to the beach cruiser crowd was sent to jail for 27 months after pleading guilty to nine counts of felony tax evasion.
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The investigation of Douglas Payson Lachman and his Let It Roll bike shops began in 2010, when the Costa Mesa 59-year-old failed to report a large amount of sales tax and submitted false records to the California State Board of Equalization, according to the BOE.
It was later discovered sales tax evasion took place from 2002 to 2009, resulting in understated taxable sales of approximately $7 million and a sales tax loss of $553,478, the BOE says. Lachman pleaded guilty on Jan. 16 and was sentenced June 13.
He has paid $125,000 of the $553,478 owed in restitution to the BOE. After his release from jail, he will be placed on supervised release for five years and nine months, according to the BOE, which notes the Orange County District Attorney's office prosecuted the case.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.