Restaurateur Thom Pham Gets Probation For Tax Fraud
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Restaurant owner Thom Pham has been sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to 38 counts of filing false tax returns, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office announced Friday.
Pham, 45, of Plymouth, pleaded guilty June 11 to tax fraud for underreporting monthly taxable sales at his restaurant, Thanh Do, in St. Louis Park. He has been placed on probation for five years and ordered him to spend a year in the workhouse. The judge agreed to let Pham serve it on electric home monitoring instead.
At the Tuesday sentencing, Hennepin County District Court Judge Regina Chu said she was not sending Pham to prison because he appeared "amenable to probation" and she wants him to pay the money he owes to the state.
Pham will pay restitution to the state of $130,858 for the taxes owed from November 2013 through December 2016, penalty and interest. He will also have 39 felony convictions on his record.
WCCO-TV first reported in 2012 that Pham owed more than $164,000 to the Minnesota Department of Revenue since opening his first restaurant in 1999. At the time, he told us he was on a monthly payment plan to the government.
