CLEVELAND Park owner, others face tax-dodging charges

Park income was hidden to avoid taxes, according to a federal indictment.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- The former owner of Conneaut Lake Park, his wife, and his business manager were charged with tax evasion in connection with the operation of the 111-year-old Pennsylvania amusement park and other businesses.
Gary Harris, 63, of Conneaut, Ohio, was still on probation from his 1997 conviction for tax evasion when the new federal grand jury indictment was unsealed in Cleveland on Thursday.
First case
In the former case, Harris was sentenced to 27 months in prison after admitting that from January 1987 through July 1991, he and business associates acquired bankrupt companies and stripped them of assets for personal profit.
In the new case, Harris, his wife, Tamara Schwentker Harris, 34, and business manager, Michael Kotula, 49, of Euclid, Ohio, are accused of using various corporations and trusts to hide income Harris made from businesses, including the amusement park about 85 miles north of Pittsburgh, in Crawford County, Pa.
According to the indictment, Harris-owned entities that controlled the park didn't file any tax returns or filed false returns from 1996 to 1998.
Among other things, the indictment charges that after Gary Harris bought the financially troubled park for more than $2 million in 1996 that he used $400,000 in business receipts for his own use and didn't pay taxes on that income.
The park has gone into bankruptcy three times since 1990, and is run as a nonprofit, community operation overseen by a court-appointed trustee.
Lost rights to park
Harris once had a 99-year lease on the park, which he claimed gave him ownership of the park's rides, but he lost all rights to it in a lawsuit decided earlier this year.
The Harrises don't have a listed telephone and it wasn't immediately clear if they have an attorney. Gary Harris was in federal custody and faces a detention hearing before a federal judge in Akron on Monday.
Kotula, reached at home early Saturday, said he "absolutely" disputes the charges, but declined to further comment.