A Mandeville moviemaker who cheated Louisiana’s film tax credit program has been sentenced to six months in federal prison and the same stretch of time in a halfway house.
The Associated Press reports the sentence was handed down in a Baton Rouge federal court Wednesday to 38-year-old Daniel Garcia. U.S. Attorney Walt Green says in a news release that Garcia also must pay $900,000 to the state of Louisiana as restitution for his scheme to unfairly accrue tax credits.
Garcia, owner of DMG Holdings LLC and Louisiana Film Finishers LLC, pleaded guilty in 2013 to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud after authorities said he used canceled checks to create phony records showing he spent $3 million on a filmmaking venture. That documentation was used to obtain $900,000 in film tax credits between Feb. 10, 2009, and March 31, 2010, authorities say.
Two other men—George M. Kostuch, founder of Baton Rouge-based K2 Pictures and J. Matthew Keith of Prairieville—were tied up in Garcia’s plot, agents say. Keith admitted in 2013 to contributing to Garcia’s false paper trail by signing the checks, for which he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Kostuch confessed in May to falsifying invoices in the scheme and pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Keith is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 13, and Kostuch is to appear for sentencing Oct. 29, Green says.
The state’s film tax incentive program allows filmmakers to be given tax credits equaling 30%—at taxpayers’ expense—of the money they spend on making movies if their payments top $300,000. The state will pay cash for 85% of the tax credit’s value, or the credits can be sold to a third party.
