Chelsea contractor Marshall Swan, serving a 33-month federal sentence for falsifying five years’ worth of tax returns, will be heading home soon.
Kennebec County Sheriff Ryan Reardon said Tuesday that his office was notified that Swan, 59, will be released on home confinement beginning July 15 and running until Oct. 22.
Earlier this year, the federal judge who presided at Swan’s trial rejected a bid by Swan to get his sentence reduced. Swan was sentenced in June 2014 to 33 months in prison on each of the five counts of falsifying income tax returns and failing to report some $650,000 in income. The offenses occurred in the years 2006 through 2010.
The terms were all to be concurrent, as was a year of supervised release on each.
Reardon said the notification came from the U.S. Department of Justice, and he contacted the Chelsea town manager to let him know about the development.
Reardon said Swan will be monitored while he is on home confinement.
Swan remains a Bureau of Prisons inmate until his release date on Oct. 22 and on a federal location monitoring program until that time.
Karen-Lee Moody, chief of the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services for the District of Maine, which administers the Bureau of Prisons electronic monitoring program, said individuals on it are allowed to work for themselves or an employer, attend medical appointments and religious services, get treatment if required, and pursue normal life activities, including grocery shopping.
“They are not allowed to work more than 60 hours a week, and they get one hour of leisure time a day,” she said.
“All activities have to be approved by us,” she added. “We need to know what people are doing.”
Swan will have to pay for the monitoring program. Moody said the costs vary — starting at $56.70 a month — depending on the type of location monitoring being used.
On Tuesday, Moody said one person in Maine was currently on that program; 13 other people are on other location monitoring programs.
Based on Swan’s request for early release, it is likely he will return to the family construction business, now operated by his older son with help from Swan’s younger son.
“However, the nature of the business was work for clients based on my personal relationships over many years,” Swan wrote in an affidavit dated Jan. 7, 2016. “In my absence the business has suffered over the loss of the personal contacts and relationship. I appreciate that any reduction in sentence will not be significant. However, any extra time home that will allow me (to) return to and save the family business might make a difference.”
Swan has served his sentence in the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts. He was convicted in October 2013, on the third day of his jury trial.
He remained free while a pre-sentencing investigation was taking place.
At the trial, the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark, told jurors that Swan underreported $650,000 in tax years 2006-2010.
“This was not a rounding error,” Clark said. “This was a sustained effort over five years to report 80 percent of his income. In three years, 1 of 3 dollars was not reported on his income tax.”
Clark said Swan reported earning $2.4 million over that five-year period but paid no income tax until 2010, when he paid about $2,000.
“In 2008, he qualified for the earned income tax credit, which is for poor people,” Clark said. “This is not a family that qualified for the earned income tax credit in 2008.”
Swan’s wife, former longtime Chelsea Selectwoman Carole Swan, now 58, was convicted of the same offenses in July 2013 as well as on two charges of defrauding the federal workers’ compensation program.
Carole Swan also was convicted Sept. 17, 2013, in a separate jury trial of three counts of extortion for using her position as a selectwoman to seek kickbacks from Frank Monroe, who held the contract to plow and sand Chelsea’s roads. She was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison, and her release date is Dec. 6, 2020, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. She is being held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
The Swans were to be tried together on the tax fraud charges until Carole Swan’s attorney indicated that part of her defense was that she was subjected to domestic abuse by her husband that affected her behavior and decision-making. U.S. District Court Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. then agreed to separate the trials.
Marshall Swan’s attorney, Walter McKee, said Carole Swan did all the office work and bookkeeping and was responsible for providing all the tax information to the preparer. McKee said Marshal Swan was in the field on an excavator and didn’t track all the income he earned.
Later, Swan paid the $145,000 in back taxes he and his wife owed, plus his $40,000 fine and $500 in court assessments.
In fact, the couple paid all criminal fines and restitution, totaling more than $400,000.
While it was not clear where all the money came from, part of it came from the sale of the Swans’ single-family home on J&J Lane in Chelsea, which sold on Sept. 23, 2013, for $275,000.
The Swans converted into living quarters the second floor of a nearby garage Marshall Swan had used for excavating equipment. Also, at his sentencing hearing, Marshall Swan told the judge he was selling assets and working as much as possible to pay debts and restitution.
“I sold a lot of equipment and trucks when I knew I had tax issues and bills to pay,” Marshall Swan testified that day, saying he received $225,000 to $250,000 for loaders, an excavator, skid steers and a screener.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
Send questions/comments to the editors.
