Former Ridley Township tax collector charged with filing false tax returns
Rosezanna Czwalina served as the tax collector in Ridley Township for 30 years before retiring in December.
A former tax collector and treasurer in Ridley Township has been charged in federal court with filing false tax returns for five consecutive years, officials said Wednesday.
Rosezanna Czwalina, 69, was charged late Tuesday with that offense, a felony, according to court records. Her attorney, Eugene Bonner, declined to comment on the case Wednesday.
Czwalina served as the tax collector and treasurer in Ridley Township for 30 years, retiring in December, according to township officials. From 2014-18, she failed to report on her income tax returns the fees she was authorized to collect from duplicate tax bills and other services she provided the township, according to federal court documents.
Assistant U.S. Attorney K.T. Newton, the lead prosecutor on the case, declined to say Wednesday how much money Czwalina failed to report to the IRS on those five tax returns.
The charges come amid a federal lawsuit filed against Ridley Township by two veteran police officers.
Gerard Scanlan and Sean Brydges were demoted to the patrol division in late January after serving for nearly a decade as members of the department’s Anti-Crime Unit, working with county investigators on drug and gun cases, according to the suit.
» READ MORE: Ridley officers sue the township and their captain, saying he demoted them for revealing misconduct
In their suit, the two men said the reassignment was a demotion ordered out of spite by Capt. Scott Willoughby after they accused him of misconduct. They said Willoughby had asked them to replace money seized from drug dealers that had been removed from evidence, pressured them to drop charges against friends of his, denied them overtime, and threatened to compromise their undercover work by revealing their identities.
The township’s attorney, in responding to the suit, said that Scanlan and Brydges retained their ranks and salaries after being transferred and that the decision to move them came after the entire Anti-Crime Unit was disbanded by the department.