Rick Rizzolo blows all the other tax-evading strip club owners of America out of the water. Not only did he lose a strip club valued at $35 million at the time of its seizure, but he flagrantly violated his parole, maintained offshore accounts, and failed to pay the damages he owed a man paralyzed at the hands of CH2 security. Titanium balls, this guy has. Last month, a judge sent the former Crazy Horse Too owner back to jail. Rizzolo’s Mercedes was seized and his stepmother is being sued.
And strip club owners keep getting busted for tax fraud. You can overserve people till they kill someone driving home, you can get caught with a 12-year-old dancing in your club, you can get let blatant prostitution happen in your club, but nothing will get your titty-bar–owning ass thrown in jail quicker than getting caught cheating the IRS.
Detroit clubowner Nicholas Faranso tried to write off a family photo session and skimmed cash to buy dog toys—which seemed reasonable to Kat. Deducting them as “fetish toys” might not have been the best move. So he’s going to jail for a year. But he probably messed up the most by using a software program to change his sales gross. Good lord. Everyone knows you just have your manager put all the house fees in cash in an envelope in the safe if you want to hide money! You can’t just say a Kong is a dildo (though please check out the awesome comment at the end of this article that makes a case for the legitimacy of this deduction) Pay your damn taxes.