Metro

Grocery big gets 5 years in prison for tax fraud

Gourmet grocery kingpin Adem Arici, co-founder of Amish Market and Zeytuna, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court Monday to five years in prison for his role in a long-running tax fraud conspiracy.

Adem Arici, co-owner of Amish and Zeytuna markets

Arici, who came to the US in the 1980s from his native Turkey, pled guilty in June to failing to pay taxes on more than $50 million of income at a string of upscale grocery stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Arici, 51, of Easton, Conn., had been filing false US and New York state individual, partnership and payroll tax returns since 2004, prosecutors said.

He has been detained without bail since Dec. 1, 2011, when he was arrested on separate charges of violating the Trading With the Enemy Act over a trip he took to Cuba.

Those charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement.

One of the leaders of the tax-evasion scheme, Arici was one of nine defendants charged in the case.

Arici previously agreed to plead guilty to 15 counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US government, in exchange for a chance at a lighter sentence.