WHITE PLAINS – Former State Senator Nicholas Spano of Yonkers pled guilty in federal court to filing fraudulent tax returns. He pled guilty on Friday to one count of obstructing and impeding the due administration of the Internal Revenue laws.

Spano, 58,served in the State Senate’s 35th District representing most of Westchester County from 1987 until 2006. He was responsible for voting on and approving the state budget, a portion of which included funds for the Office of General Services.

In 1993, a White Plains-based insurance company began paying Spano a $1,500 monthly fee to act as an outside consultant. In 1996, after the insurance company was awarded a lucrative contract with OGS to become the broker of record for the state, the payments increased to $5,000 per month. They were later raised to $6,000 in 1999 and to over $8,000 – some $100,000 per year – in 2002. The payments stopped in 2008 when the insurance company ceased to be OGS’s broker of record.

The payments from the insurance company where paid through corporate entities controlled by Spano, including ONAPS, Inc., which later changed its name to HVM Corp. ONAPS had no employees or offices and was used almost exclusively to receive money paid to Spano by the insurance company.

From 2000 through 2008, he filed false federal income tax returns. He wrote checks totaling more than $180,000 from HVM to a real estate holding company he owned, which owned a two-family rental property in Yonkers. The checks were for non-existent rental expenses, also told his tax return preparer that HVM conducted business from that address and paid rent to the holding company.

Spano also failed to report to the IRS a $45,000 commission he received from the sale of a building to a White Plains real estate developer and failed to report cash rental payments he received from residential real estate tenants.