The owner of a New Jersey landscaping company has been arrested and charged with three counts of tax evasion.
Christopher M. Aldarelli Sr., 40, owner of Aldo 1 Landscaping & Lawn Service and Aldarelli Enterprises of Howell, N.J., could get up to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine for each count in the indictment against him, which was handed up Thursday. Aldarelli is free on $100,000 bail, secured by real estate owned by his father, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Aldarelli could not be reached for comment.
The indictment against Aldarelli states that from 1998 through 2000, his two companies performed substantial paving, constructing, landscaping and lawn-cutting work for municipalities and private residences. Aldarelli's businesses were first located in Ocean Township, then Wall.
Aldarelli is accused of reporting that he owed only $15,000 a year in taxes from 1998 to 2000, when he in fact owed the IRS more than $100,000 for each of those three years.
In 2002, investigators with the FBI and IRS executed search warrants in Aldarelli's home as part of the federal probe into corruption in Monmouth County and Bradley Beach, where Aldarelli's companies did considerable contract work.
The search of Aldarelli's home was an outgrowth of the investigation into the late Philip Konvitz, a millionaire and power broker whose office was located in Neptune. Terrance D. Weldon, the first person to be prosecuted in the Konvitz investigation, resigned as city manager of Asbury Park and mayor of Ocean Township in September of 2002 and pleaded guilty to extorting $64,000 from three different developers.
A connection to Aldarelli may have cost former Bradley Beach Councilman Patrick D'Angelo re-election in 2004. After the raid in Aldarelli's home, D'Angelo came under fire for a council vote he made early in 2002 on a $32,000 payment to Aldarelli for work the contractor was doing in the borough. D'Angelo, at the time, was working for Aldarelli and receiving $300 a week and the use of a car.