Malden Restaurateur Says He Was Victim Of 'Con Artist' Bookkeeper

MALDEN, MA — A Malden restaurateur is among the dozens of small business owners accusing a former Newburyport bookkeeper of stealing millions of dollars intended for state and federal tax payments. George Lambos, owner of Fresco's Roast Beef & Seafood, says he now owes more than $100,000 in taxes – money that Patricia Lindau assured him had been paid to the IRS.

Lambos told Patch he hired Lindau's company, Northeast Abacus Inc., to run his payroll when he opened Fresco's in 2016. Toward the end of 2017, he first started getting notices from the IRS and Department of Revenue about late and owed payments, but said Lindau showed him weekly reports showing the tax deposits she was supposedly making.

"She just sounded very believable," Lambos said. He described Lindau as a "con artist" who was "so personable on the phone."

"She would talk to you like she cared about your family and how you were doing," he said.

Lambos cut ties with Lindau at the end of 2019, only to find out months later that he owed more than $100,000 in payroll taxes. When he confronted her, she pinned it on a former employee who had been fired for applying the funds to the wrong federal ID number, Lambos said.

It was during the crisis that Lambos – and many other business owners – found that Lindau was in the wind. In May, her website was gone and her phone was disconnected, and she and her husband filed for bankruptcy last month, according to a recent Boston Globe article. The Globe reported that the couple owes $1.3 million to their 20 biggest creditors, but they may be undercutting those numbers: Jimmy's Pizza Too of Chelmsford claims Lindau failed to pay $159,000 in taxes, 60 percent more than what's listed in the bankruptcy filing.

Lambos found that his uncle, who also had Lindau running his books, owes nearly $200,000 in taxes. He sent in a tip to the FBI and filed a complaint with the FTC after being told by Attorney General Maura Healey's office that it handles consumer-to-business, not business-to-business, disputes.

Healey's office forwarded two complaints about Lindau to the Department of Revenue, and Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett's office has opened an investigation into Northeast Abacus, the Globe reported.

But Lambos is still on the hook for the $100,000 the IRS says he owes. The Globe reported that the IRS and the Department of Revenue do not have legal discretion to forgive tax debts. Lambos has made two payments worth close to $50,000 and said he is going to have to take out a loan to pay the remainder.

"I've hired an attorney, but I'm trying to pay what I can to stop the bleeding," he said. "It's tough, you know, and we have to do what we can. I don't want to be laying people off."

A court filing cited by the Globe indicates that Lindau and her husband plan to liquidate their assets in the hopes of paying off creditors within three to five years. But there has been no explanation so far as to how the couple amassed such a large debt and why their clients' taxes went unpaid.

"It's crazy that you would do that to hardworking people," Lambos said.