Former North Hempstead Democratic Committee chairman Gerard Terry was arraigned on a felony tax fraud charge Tuesday morning for allegedly failing to pay $13,000 in state taxes in 2010.
Terry pleaded not guilty in First District Court in Hempstead following his surrender Tuesday morning to investigators from the Nassau County District Attorney’s office.
Terry, 61, of Roslyn Heights, was released from custody on the condition that he surrender his passport and not leave the state. He is due back in court April 26.
Terry has accumulated a state tax debt of more than $100,000 since 2000 and more felony charges are likely to come, prosecutor Diane Peress said in court Tuesday.
The complaint that Investigator Jason Jerome filed in court cites Terry’s failure to file a tax return for the year 2010 in April 2011 and to pay the more than $13,000 he owed that year. Terry’s 2010 income was more than $250,000, prosecutors said in a statement.
The charge carries a maximum sentence of 2 1-3 to seven years in prison. A DA’s office spokesman said the office is continuing to investigate Terry.
Prosecutors had to file the charge for the 2010 tax year before the statute of limitations ran out, Peress said. Terry committed the same crime in 2009, she said, but the statute of limitations was already up for that year when the DA’s office started its investigation in January.
Terry was an attorney for the Town of North Hempstead’s Board of Zoning Appeals and special counsel to the town attorney’s office until his contract expired at the end of last year. He held six government jobs that paid him more than $200,000 last year while he maintained the tax debt, Newsday’s review found.
Prosecutors began investigating Terry after he issued a Jan. 21 public statement admitting he owed $1.4 million in state and federal back taxes amid a Newsday investigation.
That statement — which Peress said Terry paid $8,000 to issue — said he was working with the Internal Revenue Service to pay back his federal tax debt.
But a $5,100 check Terry sent the IRS at the time bounced, Peress said in court, and he has told the agency he will never be able to repay it.
“In addition to his state tax problems, Mr. Terry’s situation with the IRS, to which he admits he owes $1 million, is expected to get worse,” Peress said.
Tomao said he has talked with U.S. attorneys regarding possible federal charges against Terry for his debt to the Internal Revenue Service.
“It’s important to try to come to some type of resolution,” Tomao said.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York said she had no information on Terry.
Garden City-based attorney Peter Tomao said Terry sees a doctor “frequently” in connection with his tax problems, Tomao said.
In his January statement, Terry blamed them on “Type-A workaholic compulsion with self-denial and truly catastrophic health issues.”
Terry resigned as head of the North Hempstead Democratic Committee on Feb. 1, about an hour after Supervisor Judi Bosworth called for his resignation.
The longtime Democratic political operative is still under an active contract with the Freeport Community Development Agency, Executive Director Kimberly Labrador said in an email Tuesday.
Labrador declined to comment on Terry’s arrest, but said the agency would review the matter at its May 2 meeting.
Terry has lost contracts with the Democratic commissioner of the Nassau County Board of Elections, the Long Beach Housing Authority and the Roosevelt Library Board.
He previously served as the village attorney in Manorhaven until 2012.
The revelations about Gerard and Concetta Terry led the town to enforce a 25-year-old requirement in its ethics code that leaders of town political committees file financial disclosure forms. The town never collected the forms from Terry or any other town party leader.
The Town Board also amended its ethics code last month to require all town contractors and some family members of town employees to file financial disclosure forms with the town Board of Ethics.
The board is investigating Terry’s wife, Deputy Town Clerk Concetta Terry, for omitting Gerard’s tax debts from her financial disclosure forms dating back to 2006.
In a statement, town spokeswoman Carol Trottere said the town continues “to cooperate with law enforcement in their inquiries.” The review of Concetta Terry is ongoing, she said.
Nassau County Democratic Committee Chairman Jay Jacobs expressed sympathy for Terry on Tuesday.
“I think he just got in over his head on his finances and I feel badly for him personally,” Jacobs said.
