Kevin Scott Wynn

A Mesa-based construction professional and bar owner is facing major trouble with the Internal Revenue Service over more than $400,000 in back taxes. Kevin Scott Wynn is accused of failing to pay personal income taxes for more than two decades so he could spend the money on his “personal lifestyle,” according to a federal grand jury indictment. Wynn has worked in the construction business since at least 1996 through companies he has controlled. His most recent venture was Wynn Companies. He’s also worked for SCC Southwest Construction and Black River Construction and Development and has also operated Monsterland, a downtown Mesa bar at 18 W. Main St. Court records show Wynn has lived in Alpine and Mesa since 1996. The indictment contends after Wynn stopped filing tax returns in 1996 the IRS began the process of assessing past due taxes based on third parties’ reports of money paid to or through Wynn. The indictment argues Wynn eventually began to conceal assets from the IRS through the use of a personal assistant’s account, but he refused to produce the account when the IRS probed. Based on third-party reporting to the IRS, the feds assessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional taxes on Wynn for 1999, 2000 and 2002 in Maricopa and Navajo counties. It includes taxes, penalties and fees of more than $172,000 for 2000 alone. Additional taxes have also been tacked on to 2010, 2011 and 2013, totaling more than $415,000. The indictment accuses Wynn of lying on a mortgage refinance application in 2008 when he answered he hadn’t defaulted on any federal debt claiming he paid estimated taxes in 2005 and 2006, when he hadn’t asserting he earned $65,000 per month in salary and business profits on a credit application for a BMW 650i Coupe, but failing to file taxes for that year. According to the indictment, the IRS has been trying to settle with Wynn for years. In 2011, he wrote a letter to the IRS, appearing to signal he inexplicably thought paying taxes was voluntary. Wynn is charged with hiding nearly a half-million dollars in an account belonging to somebody who’s only named in the indictment by the initials A.F. The IRS said on Aug. 2, 2011, A.F. opened an account under her name and signature at Bank of America in California. She included Wynn as a beneficiary of the account. Wynn started sending his money for A.F. to deposit that month. Wynn allegedly directed A.F. to deposit three checks from the business accounts of Black River Construction, Wynn Companies and Monsterland that totaled $45,349.51. A.F. continued to transfer Wynn’s funds in her Bank of America account after she moved to Mesa in April 2012. According to the indictment, the IRS tracked down Wynn that September to discuss the unfiled tax years from 2006 to 2010. Wynn responded to the IRS with a letter advocating for his “constitutional right to labor.” He also asked it to remove his tax lien and threatened a revenue officer by writing that the IRS has policies to “punish employees who violate procedures and citizen civil and constitutional rights.” The indictment said A.F. stopped using the account to hide Wynn’s money on Sept. 20, 2012, a few days after his communication with the IRS. A few weeks after that, the IRS told Wynn in a detailed letter that his positions about taxes were “frivolous.” Included with the letter was a brochure on why residents must pay taxes. In November 2014, Wynn answered an IRS summons for all business income documents between 2007 and 2012, but he didn’t include the Bank of America account money. That account totaled deposits of $235,349.51 in 2011 and $161,425.42 in 2012. This isn’t Wynn’s first time finding himself in tax trouble. He was assessed a tax lien from Maricopa County in 1986 after not paying federal taxes on money he earned running Wynn’s Pool Services. He settled the lien two years later.