Mike Yassine enters guilty plea on tax fraud charges
Mike Yassine, 40
Former Austin club owner Hussein Ali “Mike” Yassine pleaded guilty to tax fraud in a federal court room Wednesday.
Yassine was found guilty last October of money laundering after a federal investigation revealed he was using his popular night clubs to run a drug trafficking ring. The 40-year-old, along with his three brothers, helped operate Yassine Enterprises, which ran a slew popular clubs in the heart of the downtown entertainment district.
By entering a guilty plea Mike Yassine is admitting to providing tax officials with false information in the Yassine’s 2009 federal income tax returns, including false figures of gross receipts generated from the clubs Spill, Qua, Kiss and Fly, Pure and Malia in. According to a statement from the Department of Justice, those numbers were understated by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yassine now faces up to three years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $25,000. Just last month, he was sentenced to 151 months in federal prison for money laundering.