The 80-year-old owner of Upper East Side Italian Il Vagabondo pled guilty yesterday to federal tax evasion charges. Ernest Vogliano, whose restaurant boasts a bocce court, stashed nearly $5 million in Swiss accounts and filed some false returns in the last decade. Worse, he admitted in court that he "knew at the time that what [he] was doing was wrong and illegal." Worse still, the scam that he has agreed to pay more than $940,000 in penalties for pulling saved him less than $13k in the first place! Beyond the fees, Vogliano faces up to a year in jail when he is sentenced in March.
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