NEW HANOVER COUNTY — The North Carolina Department of Revenue has settled its suit with a New Hanover County businessman well-known for running a popular wings restaurant in town.
READ MORE: Former FuWangz owner arrested for $80K sales tax embezzlement
Sneads Ferry resident Marteke Latwuan Franks, 49, pleaded guilty to five counts of embezzlement of state sales taxes, amounting to roughly $80,000, on Monday. Franks operated FuWangz at 2105 Carolina Beach Road for eight years before closing in 2023. The restaurant was best known for serving 40 different flavors of wings.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway sentenced Franks to five years of supervised probation, including 15 days in the custody of the sheriff’s office, 75 hours of community service, and paying restitution in the amount of $79,894.22. According to a release from NCDOR, the judgments will be served out concurrently unless probation is violated, in which the judgments would then run consecutively.
The judge suspended a prison term that could have landed Franks 32 months in two separate judgments.
Franks was found the sole member of Fuwangz, LLC, and therefore was responsible for collecting, holding in trust, and remitting sales tax to the North Carolina Department of Revenue. The courts found he aided and abetted the business to embezzle, misapply, and use elsewhere the sales tax money collected between May 1, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2020.
An investigation was carried out by special agents with the Department’s Criminal Investigations Division in Raleigh and was prosecuted by special prosecutions attorneys in the office of the attorney general.
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