IRS charges Thermax executives with tapping

The primary shareholder and two former executives of Reno-based Thermax Inc.

last week pleaded guilty to tax-related felonies.

The company produces and sells vacuum and steam-cleaning systems.

Dixie Parise, the company's biggest shareholder, along with former president Fred Peppe and former director of finance Mark Panko pleaded guilty to charges that the company paid personal expenses for its owners.

They entered the pleas before U.S.

District Judge Howard D.McKibben.

They're free on bond until sentencing on Sept.

29.

Parise, a Reno resident who pleaded guilty to charges she charged jewelry, boats and other personal expenses to the company, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Panko, who lives in Reno, and Peppe, who moved from Reno to Southern California, each face up to three years in prison and $250,000 fines.

They pleaded guilty to charges that they concealed the payment of personal expenses in the company's books and filed false tax returns for Thermax.

Among the personal items charged by Parise to the company from 1994 through 2000 were the salaries of maids and gardeners, vacations, home utilities, the purchase of a motor home and all-terrain vehicles and the education of a child, said Erick Martinez, special agent in charge of criminal investigation for the Internal Revenue Service.

Carl Parise, founder of Thermax and a member of the Nevada Inventors Hall of Fame, died in January.