News

Tony Luke’s Founder and Son Plead Guilty in Tax Fraud Case

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 10th, 2022 · 12:22 PM EDT

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We’ll get it back to Philly sports momentarily, but first, the BIG story on Action News is Tony Luke’s and a guilty plea.

From the 6ABC website:

The founder of a Philadelphia cheesesteak restaurant and one of his sons have pleaded guilty in a federal tax fraud case alleging the hiding of nearly $8 million in sales over the course of a decade.

According to United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 83-year-old Anthony Lucidonio Sr. and 55-year-old Nicholas Lucidonio, two owners of the well-known cheesesteak and sandwich shop Tony Luke’s, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

Say it ain’t so!

First it was Manco and Manco, then Chickie’s and Pete’s, then Chaka Fattah, etc. I can’t remember all of the Philly-area businesses and politicians that committed some kind of financial fraud. But now we’ve got Tony Luke’s on the list? Outrageous!

The Action News article goes on to note that there were “two sets of books to hide cash from sales at their south Philadelphia shop and acknowledged paying part of workers’ salaries under the table to evade payroll taxes,” so they basically pulled a Washington Commanders here. ALLEGEDLY. Daniel Snyder is somewhere nodding along like this while reading the Tony Luke’s news:

this is actually Robert Redford, not Zach Galifianakis

One thing that’s important to note is that Tony Luke Jr. is not named in the indictment. He actually hasn’t been working with his dad and brother since 2015. It’s the other two guys who pleaded guilty. They’ll be sentenced “later this year” and accepted full responsibility, so they copped to the whole thing. That should help them out. They aren’t going to a “federal pound me in the ass prison,” like Michael Bolton in Office Space. Maybe there’s a special ward at Graterford set aside for Philly corruption cases. The Tony Luke guys could share a cell with Bobby Henon.