Florida Contractors Sentenced in Decade-Long Scheme to Avoid Taxes, Workers’ Comp

Two Orlando contractors have been sentenced to at least two years in federal prison after orchestrating a decade-long scheme to pay workers off the books and avoid taxes and workers’ compensation insurance premium payments.

Rene Maricio Escobar, 55, and Juana Nelida Escobar, 36, of Escobar Plastering, should also try to pay $37 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, a federal judge said this week.

Court documents and testimony showed that from 2015 through 2024, the Escobars ran a program that accepted a fee equal to about 7% of subcontractors’ payroll. The firm would then provide false certificates of insurance to subcontractors, purporting to show the subcontractors and their workers, many of them undocumented immigrants, were covered for injuries.

“In fact, the company’s insurance policies were based on applications representing that the policies would cover a handful of employees and a minimal payroll,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Altogether, the plan defrauded comp insurers of more than $14 million, prosecutors said.

“Multi-million-dollar payroll and worker’s insurance fraud schemes fuel the underground economy, create unfair advantages over honest businesses, and put workers at risk, especially when these schemes exploit illegal alien workers for personal gain,” said Tim Hemker, assistant special agent in charge at Homeland Security.

Prosecutors did not say if restitution to insurers is possible.

Juana Escobar is a legal permanent resident from Mexico. Her conviction will likely result in her deportation, the DOJ said. Rene Escobar is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ecuador.

The sentencing came days after news broke that federal prosecutors in Florida are in turmoil, raising questions about current investigations and future prosecutions.

Under Jason Reding Quiñones, the relatively little-known US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, the district has emerged as an epicenter of Trump’s highly public push to use the Justice Department to pursue individuals he believes have wronged him. The moves have bolstered the office’s profile with leaders in Washington, but critics say the efforts are also taking a toll, Bloomberg News reported.

There is mounting concern that the pursuit of Trump’s agenda has triggered an exodus of experienced prosecutors and hampered Miami’s expertise in building major white collar crime and narcotics trafficking cases, according to more than a dozen former prosecutors and defense lawyers who handle cases in the district.

Several dozen attorneys in the Southern District of Florida have been fired, quit or retired since Trump’s second term began in January 2025, eroding the talent pool for prosecuting complex cases, said some of the people familiar with the office. A unit that focused on prosecuting economic crimes is down to about a dozen attorneys from the more than 30 it traditionally had, some of them said, Bloomberg noted.