Two Albany Developers Sentenced in Tax Case

Two Albany real estate developers have been sentenced to 2 years’ probation and fined $ 130,000 each for inflating the value of tax deductions for property they donated to a controversial Setauket church by more than 12 times the price for which it was later sold.

The developers, brothers Michael and Paul Gordon, also must pay back taxes in an amount to be determined by the Internal Revenue Service, according to Robert Kobel, an IRS spokesman. They were sentenced recently by U.S. District Court Judge Con Cholakis in Albany.

The Gordons were convicted in May of a single count of conspiring to defraud the federal government and three counts each of tax evasion over a three-year period, stemming from a 1980 land donation they made to St. German of Alaska Church in Setauket.

The brothers donated a parcel of land and a vacant building outside Utica to St. German in 1980, and had the land appraised at $ 622,500 by William Blackmore, an appraiser linked to the Very Rev. Paul W.V. Ischie, pastor of the church. They then took inflated tax deductions, authorities said.

Three months after the Gordons donated the property to the church, the church sold it for $ 50,000, according to prosecutors.