Contractor didn’t pay taxes

Contractor Raul Casillas, 55, of Chula Vista, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for evading income taxes for three tax years.

Casillas was ordered to pay $187,533.95 to the Internal Revenue Service at a rate of $1,000 per month which represents what he owed for tax years 2008, 2009, and 2010. That amount includes interest.

Casillas will surrender to begin his term on Jan. 3, 2017. He is free on a $164,000 property bond. He pleaded guilty to income tax evasion.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Salel asked U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Battaglia to impose a 30-month sentence.

The prosecutor said Casillas paid no taxes on $2.2 million in gross receipts and did not even file tax returns for those years.

Casillas concealed his funds by putting his money into a bank account he opened in his wife’s name as well as other bank accounts under the names of others that he controlled, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

His attorney asked for a 1-year term in prison on Oct. 11. He wrote that Casillas has disabilities in math, reading, attention, and didn’t fully realize what he was doing.

Before his arrest in May, 2015, Casillas had gone through four years of training to be a lay Catholic deacon in his Bonita church. After his parole, Casillas hopes to return to church work, his attorney wrote.

A San Diego Superior Court record from 2011 show Casillas was convicted of elder abuse, using another contractor’s license, and contracting without a license in 2009. He was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $116,812 in restitution.

The elder abuse charge stems from incidents in which Casillas accompanied an 80-year-old woman to her bank and she paid him in a large amount of cash and cashier’s checks for construction work.

Court documents say some South Bay residents were unhappy with the work he did on their property and that he was not licensed to be a contractor at the time. He was also convicted in 2005 of fraudulent use of a contractor’s license and received probation and a fine.