*R&B artist Mario Winans faces up to two years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion Thursday in a New Jersey courthouse.
The singer and Grammy-winning producer, 42, copped to two misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax returns before Justice Esther Salas in federal court in Newark, according to Page Six.
Prosecutor Joseph Mack charged that Winans failed to pay Uncle Sam for income totaling $2.8 million for five straight years from 2008 to 2012. He owes a total of $434,968 in back taxes.
Winans, who won a Grammy Award for best gospel performance for co-writing his cousin CeCe Winans’s song “Pray,” faces a maximum of two years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 24.
Sources said he’ll be forced to work out a payment plan with the Internal Revenue Service to fully reimburse the government.
Winans, who lives in Fort Lee, NJ, had the same judge who presided over the fraud trial of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” stars Joe Giudice and his wife, Teresa Giudice.
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