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Somerville man sentenced to 3 years in prison, fined $75,000
Published 3:06pm Friday, June 22, 2012A federal judge Friday sentenced the owner of a Somerville recycling business to three years in prison for structuring currency transactions totaling more than $500,000 to evade reporting requirements of U.S. banks and financial institutions.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Emerson Hopkins also ordered Jerry Dwayne Lang, 45, of Somerville to forfeit $75,000 to the government and to serve three years of supervised release after completing his prison term.
A federal jury in Decatur convicted Lang in December on 70 counts of structuring cash transactions with two separate banks between April 2008 and October 2008. Lang’s transactions were designed to avoid the legal requirement for banks to report currency transactions in excess of $10,000 to the federal government.
Lang was a scrap metal dealer who ran C&J Recycling. According to evidence at trial, he bought wrecked vehicles at auction and hired American Recycling to crush the vehicles for scrap metal.
American Recycling issued multiple checks made out to Lang, not to C&J Recycling, of less than $10,000, instead of one check of more than $10,000. Lang would cash the checks at different times.
