NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A well-known Wilmington businessman and entrepreneur with ties to a controversial brewery that shuttered two years ago has pleaded guilty in court.
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According to U.S. Attorney Mike Easley’s office, George Taylor Jr., who founded TRU Colors, is being held accountable for not filing employee tax returns, nor paying the $2.2 million owed for his operation National Speed. Instead, Easley wrote in a release Thursday that Taylor “spent it to pad his business and personal expenses.”
“Tax cheating like this undermines faith in our system and can’t be tolerated in honest business,” Easley indicated. “Hardworking taxpayers won’t stand for it, and neither will the IRS.”
Taylor — who has opened and either sold or shuttered multiple businesses, including software provider Next Glass, craft beer data and analytics company Untappd, NASCAR team Taylor Motorsports and TRU Colors Brewing — is the chairman and founder of National Speed. It has locations in both Wilmington and Richmond, Virginia, to build out and customize cars for optimum efficiency.
The attorney’s office states Taylor failed to file employment tax returns from the years 2014 through 2021 for National Speed. It asserts Taylor withheld Social Security, Medicare and employee income taxes and didn’t pay withholdings to the IRS.
“Business owners have a responsibility to withhold income taxes for their employees and then remit those taxes to the IRS,” said Donald “Trey” Eakins, special agent in charge at Charlotte’s Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation. “CI special agents will pursue anyone who collects these taxes and uses the funds for their own personal gain.”
The agency continues to look into the case.
In the last five years, Taylor has made headlines due to dissension with his for-profit brewery that also centered on social justice. TRU Colors began percolating in 2015 to curb gang violence in the community but officially started in 2017. Taylor’s approach was out of the box: employing active, rival gang members with the hope that providing adequate income, work and life training, as well as strengthening ties socially, would bring down violent crime rates community-wide.
In its infancy, TRU Colors scaled a 56,000-square-foot brewery on Greenfield Street, released one beer and secured Molson Coors as a minority stakeholder. Yet, it made headlines when alleged gang members broke into Taylor’s son’s home in the summer of 2021 and killed two people — including a top-tier gang member Koredreese Robert Tyson; they also injured a third victim.
The case is approaching trial in coming months, with Raquel Adams, Dyrell Green and Omonte Bell charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder and felony conspiracy.
ALSO: ‘Hopefully I’ll be there’: Attorney issue delays TRU Colors homicide cases, one trial scheduled
One year following the shootings, TRU Colors shuttered. Taylor penned an op-ed in the Wilmington Business Journal at the time noting the operation “faced stiff headwinds that have slowed progress.” He cited the pandemic, poor media coverage, dried-up funding, and lack of community support as factors contributing to his startup’s demise.
Taylor’s LinkedIn boasts having founded seven startups in 25 years, including becoming CEO of National Speed in May 2021; it notes his end date as December 2023.
He faces a five-year maximum prison sentence and also supervised probation, restitution, and monetary penalties for his tax evasion charges. Taylor will be sentenced Nov. 19 by a federal district court judge.
Port City Daily reached out to National Speed and will update if and when there is a response.
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