The owner and operator of Single Shot restaurant in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to 13 months in prison and three years of supervised release for failing to pay over $1.4 million in employment and payroll taxes, said the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The sentence follows an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations. They say between 2014 and 2024, Ruadhri McCormick, 44, employed as many as 87 people as servers, bartenders and cooks. While he withheld payroll taxes from employee paychecks, he kept the funds for personal expenses—including a home renovation, gambling and travel—and failed to pay employer tax obligations.
Court records show McCormick was ordered to pay $1,446,341 in restitution. The total tax loss includes $1,027,362 in payroll taxes withheld from employee paychecks across at least 36 quarters, alongside more than $400,000 in unpaid employer portions of Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment taxes…