Philadelphia’s own John Frances “Jack” Griffin, 62, has been sentenced to three years in prison for wire fraud and tax evasion, as stated by United States Attorney David Metcalf. U.S. District Judge Chad F. Kenney also decreed that Griffin’s punishment includes three years of supervised release and making restitution payments totaling $899,948 — directing $776,205 of that sum to the victims of his fraud and the remaining $123,743 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), per a recent announcement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Griffin, the former principal and founder of Second Story Farming Inc., which trades as Metropolis Farms, had evidently been infusing his personal bank account with the company’s funds. This operation ran from 2015 to 2018, and, within that period, Griffin raked in over $650,000, neglecting to file tax returns for any of those years. In a calculated move to avoid detection, he withdrew cash from his accounts, paid for personal items through the company’s bank, and shuffled funds to his wife.
The investigation that brought Griffin to book was a collaborative effort that involved IRS Criminal Investigation, the FBI, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Assistant United States Attorney Francis Weber, alongside Trial Attorney Catriona M. Coppler from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Tax Section, was at the helm of the prosecution. Griffin’s fraudulent conduct misled two companies into buying vertical farming systems from him — systems he had marketed with wildly inaccurate financial projections regarding potential revenues and operational costs…