A Federal Crackdown On Tax Zapper Software

Previously published by Law360.

In December, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against John Yin, a software salesman who worked for a Canadian company that sells point of sale (POS) software programs that enabled restaurants to underreport their sales, thereby lowering their tax liability.[1] Commonly called "zapper" programs, these revenue suppression software (RSS) programs are used to delete some or all of a restaurant's cash transactions and then reconcile the books of the business.

The result is that the company's books appear to be complete and accurate, but are in fact false because they reflect fewer sales than were actually made. State authorities have been trying to combat the use of zappers by cash intensive businesses like restaurants for years, and the Yin case is significant because the government's investigation revealed that the defendant marketed and sold zapper software throughout the Seattle area to multiple restaurants over the course of several years.

Yin pleaded guilty to a widespread scheme to defraud federal and state tax authorities, resulting in the avoidance of more than $3.4 million in taxes. This case is undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg, as charges against other defendants will almost certainly result from Yin's guilty plea.

The Alleged Offenses

According to the publicly-filed charging document and guilty plea agreement, Yin worked as a salesman for Profitek, a British Columbia company selling POS systems for hospitality and retail industries, from at least 2009 through mid-2015. In addition to its Canadian headquarters, Profitek has offices in China and a growing dealership network across North America.

Profitek designed, marketed, sold, and supported revenue suppression software as an "add-on" to its Profitek point-of-sale software. The RSS functioned only with the Profitek POS software. POS software creates a database of transactions that is used to calculate a business' tax obligations. RSS is used to modify a business' POS database for the sole purpose of hiding cash skimming.

When executed, the RSS program deletes all or some of the business's cash transactions, and then reconciles the books of the business. The result is business records that appear to be complete and accurate but, in fact, are false and fraudulent in that they show less than total income earned.

Yin acknowledged in his guilty plea agreement that he successfully sold the POS software, and assisted in the widespread...