The owners of five Mexican restaurants in Indiana – including four in the IPR area – will serve home detention and pay restitution after pleading guilty to theft charges.  As IPR’s Stephanie Wiechmann reports, the state investigated the businesses for under-reporting sales.

This week, Manuel Rodriquez Alonso and Rosalio Sanchez pleaded guilty to multiple counts of thefts in Marion County.  The restaurant owners were charged in February with under-reporting an estimated $1.8 million in sales to the state.

The two own five restaurants in Delaware, Grant, and Marion counties.  This includes Casa del Sol and Ciudad Colonial in Muncie, Casa Grande in Gas City, and El Metate in Fairmount.  The charges include sales at York Pizza in Gas City, which the men owned, but closed in 2014.

Alonso will serve a year of home detention and Sanchez will serve two.  They have also agreed to pay restitution of nearly $143,000 to the state Department of Revenue.

But the state is considering taking more.  The Marion County prosecutor’s office says it seized more than $247,000 in cash and bank accounts from the owners.  It is asking to keep control of all of that money as restitution.

Court documents say state employees visited Alonso and Sanchez’s restaurants several times in 2015 to eat.  Each time they paid in cash, the cashier handed back the correct change without actually recording the sale.

In a statement, Marion County prosecutor Terry Curry says Alonso and Sanchez are the second recent case of skimming cash sales the county has prosecuted.

Disclosure Note:  Casa del Sol Mexican Grill is a current underwriter of Indiana Public Radio.