A staffing company owner was sentenced to six months in prison for failing collect and pay nearly $1.2 million in employment taxes to the Internal Revenue Service, the US Department of Justice reported. Dary Son, 37, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, owned a staffing company call DS Agency and failed to pay the taxes from June 2015 through August 2019.

Dary Son is the younger sister of Vanny Son, who was previously prosecuted by the department for evasion of employment taxes at his staffing firm, the department said. Vanny Son reported to prison in 2015, but his wife took over operation of his staffing firm, called Son Associates. They later divorced in 2017.

However, Son Associates began subcontracting business to companies controlled by Vanny Son’s family members, including DS Agency LLC, Dary Son’s firm, the department said.

DS Agency received and cashed checks from Son Associates for providing workers in the total amount of over $7.7 million from 2015 to 2019, the department said. Instead of depositing these payments in a bank account, Dary Son cashed these checks at a check cashing business in Harrisburg from 2015 to mid-2017; starting in 2018, Vanny Son’s now ex-wife and Dary Son regularly made trips to a check cashing business in Philadelphia where Dary Son cashed about $3 million in checks in less than a year.

The workers employed by Dary Son and her family members’ companies worked regularly at several food manufacturing facilities in Pennsylvania, according to the department. A number of them were transported to their work sites by Dary Son, and they were generally paid in cash by Vanny Son’s ex-wife, according to the department. The ex-wife passed away in 2021 when the investigation remained ongoing and before any charges were filed in this case.