The DUMBO restaurateur who unexpectedly shuttered his popular gastropub and disappeared a week ago — surprising his employees as well as several couples whose cash he’d taken for wedding receptions — was arrested Thursday and charged with tax fraud, authorities said.
Jason Stevens, owner of reBar on Front Street in the trendy neighborhood, turned himself in to the Brooklyn DA’s office and was hit with grand larceny and several fraud counts, all related to nonpayment of taxes, according to a criminal court complaint.
He is accused of withholding nearly $1 million in taxes between June 2009 and December 2012, court records show. He was released after posting $30,000 bail, officials said.
If convicted he faces up to 15 years on the grand larceny charge.
Stevens suddenly closed up shop last Friday, posting a note on the front door that read, “ReBar is closed and bankrupt. DO NOT ENTER.”
He also sent an email to the restaurant’s managers informing them to get rid of their keys and asking them to forward the bad news to any staff not included on his email.
A check of federal and state bankruptcy filings after the closing turned up no records for Stevens or reBar.
One stunned employee told The Post that the restaurant’s 53 employees had been stiffed out of three weeks of pay.
Stevens then went into hiding along with the deposit money of numerous couples, who had put anywhere from $6,000 to $35,000 down to have their wedding receptions at reBar, employees said.
Aisling Jumper and her fiance Scott Matthews-Novelli forked over around $14,000 for their wedding at reBar, which had been scheduled for Aug. 9.
“My family is literally flying in from all over the world,” Jumper, an Irish native, told The Post after finding out about the closure. “Our date is not movable. We’re getting married that weekend.”
The move left the cash-strapped brides and grooms scrambling to come up with a plan B, as many other restaurants sympathetically tried to accommodate them by slashing their prices.
Although he was unreachable for almost a week, a source with knowledge of the case told The Post that authorities were aware of his whereabouts, and negotiated Stevens’ surrender.
His defense attorney, Allen Bahn, declined to comment.
Stevens has not been charged in connection with the wedding deposits or the money stiffed employees, say he owes them, although the state Department of Labor and the state Attorney General may pursue civil charges in the future, a source said.
Investigators from the Brooklyn DA’s office had been investigating Stevens since last spring, raiding reBar in April 2013 to seize the business’ records and computers after receiving multiple financial complaints against the venue.
