Flight School Owner Who Allegedly Stiffed Students Facing Jail

Several students of a Virginia flight school said they were left stranded after it abruptly shut down. [Credit: iStock]

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) is reporting that the owner of a flight school that went bankrupt while allegedly holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in student deposits has struck a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to tax evasion.

Kevin Rychlik is facing a prison term but by pleading guilty he avoided indictment on a laundry list of serious federal charges relating to his operation of American Aviation at Manassas Regional Airport (KMNZ) in Virginia and several other businesses.

READ MORE: Virginia Flight School Closure Leaves Students Stranded

The charges were filed against Rychlik in May, three months before he abruptly closed the school on August 1 and filed for bankruptcy for the businesses and personally.

The result is that dozens of students, some of which had as much as $100,000 on deposit, have no chance of getting more than a small fraction of their money back as they join about 500 other creditors named in the proceedings.

The tax evasion case makes their situation even bleaker because the IRS is always the first to be paid in cases like this. The IRS said Rychlik evaded taxes and withheld employee deductions without remitting them to the government for years and owes it $3.4 million. Any assets will go toward paying that before creditors see any reimbursement.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

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Russ NilesAuthor

Russ Niles has been a journalist for 40 years, a pilot for 30 years and joined AVweb in 2003. When he’s not writing about airplanes he and his wife Marni run a small winery in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.