Landscape Firm Owner Pleads Guilty to Fraud

An Irvine man has pleaded guilty to a scam at his Huntington Beach landscaping company that cheated the government out of $625,000 in payroll and unemployment taxes.

Roger William Borland, 44, who was president of Environments West Inc., pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court Monday to conspiracy, corporate tax evasion, and falsifying his own returns. EWI’s former vice president, Gregory J. Novosel, had pleaded guilty April 3 to conspiracy and tax evasion.

Novosel and Borland were indicted Jan. 29 on 11 counts. They are to be sentenced July 24, Assistant U.S. Atty. David C. Marcus said.

The pair admitted setting up a sham company to conceal their company’s payment of wages and avoid payroll taxes from 1989 to 1991.

The government calculated that EWI diverted $1.7 million to the sham company, Coastal Pacific Services, disguising the money as payments to a subcontractor. Novosel and Borland then paid themselves and other EWI employees $1.6 million through the Coastal account without reporting the payments to the Internal Revenue Service, Marcus said.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Novosel and Borland could be sentenced to 24 to 30 months in prison.