Restaurateur behind Triangle sports bars pleads guilty to embezzling over $1 million
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- Raed Amra pleaded guilty to 15 counts of embezzling $1.7M in sales tax.
- Amra must repay $711,958 over five years and serve 30 days in prison annually.
- Court imposed probation, house arrest, and curfew as part of sentencing terms.
A Wake County man pleaded guilty Wednesday to 15 counts of embezzling from the state through his three restaurants in the Triangle.
Raed Abdel Karim Amra, 49, of Apex was arrested in March 2023 after investigators with the N.C. Department of Revenue discovered he’d kept sales tax revenue from Oct. 1, 2012, to Dec. 31, 2019, according to a news release from the state.
Amra is the president of the three companies behind Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, which has locations in downtown Durham and downtown Raleigh and closed a third location in Chapel Hill.
In that seven-year period, Amra embezzled $1.7 million in sales tax, the release stated. Before his hearing Wednesday, he had already repaid $1 million; he’ll have to repay the remaining $711,958 over the next five years, according to court documents.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway sentenced Amra to a minimum of four years and nine months and a maximum of eight years in prison, court documents show. Ridgeway suspended the majority of Amra’s sentence; instead, he’ll be on supervised probation for five years and must serve 30 days in prison each of those five years, according to sentencing paperwork.
Amra will be on house arrest for the first year of probation and must follow a curfew; he is only allowed to leave for work and medical purposes, court documents state.
It’s not clear how investigators discovered the fraud. He had no prior criminal history, besides a 1994 conviction on a charge of second-degree robbery in Fresno, California, according to court documents.
Tobacco Road Sports Cafe’s first location opened on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh in 2008 and moved to West Jones Street in 2017, The News & Observer previously reported.
Amra was still listed as the president for all three companies — ARR Entertainment, IEAT LLC and TRSC-Chapel Hill — as of Friday afternoon, according to state records.
