WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Former TRU Colors Brewing owner, George Taylor, was sentenced to a year in prison for tax crimes related to his business Natural Speed. Over a seven-year period, from 2014 to 2021, Taylor avoided paying $2,272,072 in taxes.
The sentencing was decided Wednesday in a hearing at the Alton Lennon Federal Building, in a courtroom full of Taylor’s family, friends and former employees of TRU Colors. Chief Judge Richard Myers made the ruling.
“It was not evil, but wrong and you knew it was wrong,” Myers told Taylor as he told him his decision.
The U.S. government, represented by attorney Brian Flanagan, argued for a guideline sentence of 27 months in prison. He argued that not paying taxes was not just a series of poor decisions, but instead a “business model.”
“This wasn’t a case of keeping the lights on, this was a case of getting bigger and better lights,” Flanagan said. He said that Taylor increased pay and hired more employees year after year, showing that it wasn’t a matter of keeping the business afloat.
Meanwhile, Taylor’s defense attorney Doug Kingsbery argued that Taylor’s heart was in the right place.
“The prudent thing would have been to close the business [but] he had an unusual amount of care and loyalty for his employees,” Kingsbery said. “This doesn’t excuse the conduct, but it does mitigate it.”
Kingsbery said Taylor put the money he didn’t give in taxes towards his business and employees, not towards material items for himself. TRU Colors employed gang members as a method to try to decrease violence in the community, so he kept his pay competitive to try to keep employees with the company and off the streets.
Several letters from former employees that attested to Taylor’s character were read aloud by Kingsbery. Taylor became emotional during this time.
“The letters are extraordinary,” Judge Myers said. “I don’t see letters like that for most people.”
Taylor then addressed the judge himself, saying he was sorry for his actions and there was no excuse for them. He said he was under a lot of stress at the time he made those decisions and that there just wasn’t enough money to pay all of the employees, but he couldn’t imagine laying any of them off.
“TRU Colors was saving lives,” Taylor said.
Taylor said he saw no other way at the time and didn’t know what else to do. He said even though he is struggling with the current legal issues that “all of this will make me a better person.”
When Judge Myers handed down the decision, he told the defense he was going to vary the sentence downward, “but not to the extent requested.”
“I think you got very absorbed in TRU Colors, you lost sight of others outside of that and you lost sight of yourself,” Myers said addressing Taylor. “Nobody is their worst day.”
Myers said he couldn’t unsee the criminal behavior, though, and even though Taylor wasn’t “motivated by greed,” he knew his actions were wrong.
Myers handed down a prison sentence of one year and one day, three years of supervised release, and restitution of $2,272,000 plus interest back to the federal government.
“I am sentencing the conduct, not the person,” Myers said. “You can recover from this.”
A former employee of Taylor’s, Anthony Brumm, sent us the following statement in response to the sentencing:
“I’m a little surprised, not happy about it though. Regardless of what a lot of people think and have to say about George, he’s done a lot of good for the community. Maybe he’s made some wrong decisions but even those decisions I believe come from a good place.”
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