On Wednesday, that man, Evgeny A. Freidman, who was a business partner of Cohen and was once so powerful in the cab industry that he was known as New York’s Taxi King, was sentenced to probation for engaging in his own tax fraud.
Freidman, 48, had been accused of failing to pay more than $5 million in surcharges collected in the cabs he managed. But in a deal with state prosecutors last year, he agreed to cooperate in the federal investigation into Cohen and to plead guilty to a lesser charge, as well as pay $1 million in restitution.
“I’m very humbled by what has happened,” Freidman said in Albany County Court before he was sentenced. “I have started fresh.”
The case turned Freidman, a Russian immigrant and the son of a New York cabdriver, into an unlikely peripheral figure in the investigations surrounding Trump.
Prosecutors had sought Freidman’s cooperation to use as leverage against Cohen, who worked as Trump’s fixer for nearly a decade and came under scrutiny as a result of the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Freidman once ran more than 1,000 taxis in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, owning hundreds of his own medallions, the city-issued permits that allow taxis to take street hails, and managing medallions for other owners, including Cohen. But in recent years, he became mired in a series of legal issues for underpaying his drivers, failing to pay child support and, ultimately, evading taxes.
In 2017, the New York attorney general’s office accused him of illegally pocketing a 50-cent surcharge from millions of rides between 2012 and 2016. Cabs are supposed to collect the fee and send it to the state so it can be used for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs mass transit in the region. Instead, prosecutors said, Freidman kept the money and falsified tax returns.
He was indicted on five felonies that carried a maximum prison sentence of 25 years each. Last year, he pleaded guilty to evading just $50,000 in taxes. In addition to the $1 million fine, he agreed to remain under probation for five years and signed a document giving the state authority to collect an additional $4 million in the future.
On Wednesday morning, Freidman spoke in a low voice as he apologized for his crimes in a mostly empty courtroom. His lawyers have said that the emergence of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft had devastated Freidman’s business and forced him into wrongdoing.
Freidman was once worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but he is now facing judgments on $400 million in debts, according to a memo filed as part of the sentencing. Once a lawyer, he also has been disbarred and prohibited from managing medallions. He is currently working as an independent sales representative, according to the memo.
“This case has brought him to his knees,” Freidman’s lawyer, Patrick J. Egan, said in court.
The sentencing in Albany County Court had been delayed three times because Freidman had not paid the full restitution, according to prosecutors. The state filed a memo earlier this month accusing Freidman of violating his agreement and overstating his cooperation in the case against Cohen; that memo said prosecutors would push for jail time if Freidman did not pay by this week.
Judge Peter A. Lynch applauded Freidman for paying the fine and cooperating with prosecutors. “To be quite blunt, given the crumbling of your business empire, your ability to pay the restitution is spectacular,” he said.
Prosecutors also disclosed in court papers that Freidman has been helping the attorney general’s office with its inquiry into the lending practices in the taxi medallion industry. Freidman has met with investigators three times about that inquiry, which was launched in response to a New York Times series.
For years, Cohen had entrusted Freidman with his 32 taxi medallions. Freidman paid Cohen a monthly fee for the medallions and, in return, he got to operate the cabs and earn revenue from them. The two men also became personal friends; at one point, during Freidman’s divorce, Cohen temporarily rented him an apartment in Trump Park Avenue.
Last year, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including some related to his medallions. Among other issues, Cohen admitted to a tax-evasion scheme in which he failed to tell the government about more than $1.3 million in income from his partnership with Taxi-Operator 2, who was Freidman, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Cohen did not report a bonus of at least $870,000 that Freidman paid him to entice him to operate some of his medallions, prosecutors charged. Between 2012 and 2016, Freidman also arranged for some of Cohen’s medallion income to be paid to him personally instead of to his businesses in order to evade taxes, prosecutors said.
The case against Cohen, which originated in the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, became public in the spring of 2018 when agents carried out search warrants at his home, office and hotel room. It focused in large part on the lawyer’s work for Trump’s campaign and in particular a $130,000 payment made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who has said she had an affair with Trump. He has denied the relationship.
Cohen eventually pleaded guilty to making hush-money payments in violation of federal campaign finance laws. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
This article originally appeared in
.