2 plead not guilty to tax fraud

The owners of a Tacony strip club indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on tax and fraud charges pleaded not guilty yesterday before a federal magistrate judge.

Kevin Rankin, 60, of Philadelphia, and Bishop Krabsz, 59, of Cherry Hill, were released on $75,000 bail each.

They were ordered to surrender passports, not to travel outside the nine-county federal judicial district of eastern Pennsylvania and not have any firearms.

After a brief discussion with U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice, Rankin was allowed to go to Atlantic City to visit lawyer Edwin J. Jacobs Jr.

Jacobs is representing Rankin in connection with a gun charge.

Rankin and Krabsz were arrested in October 2005 and charged with possession of a firearm by a felon. They were released on bail and await trial on those charges.

The two, who have previous felony convictions, own the strip club Dangerous Curves on Tacony Street in the Northeast.

The club came under scrutiny in October 2005 in connection with the investigation of now-imprisoned City Councilman Rick Mariano.

Rankin is a former lawyer and pal of Mariano who once taught math at Northeast Catholic High School when Mariano was a student there.

Federal agents searched the homes and businesses of Rankin and Krabsz looking for evidence of possible crimes, including extortion, fraud, filing false tax returns, tax evasion and failure to pay payroll taxes.

During the investigation, agents found handguns in a desk in Rankin's office at the strip club and at Krabsz's home.

The tax and fraud charges came to light on Tuesday, when the feds handed up a second indictment charging Rankin and Krabsz.

The charging papers alleged that Rankin and Krabsz had submitted false tax returns with loan applications, underreported $800,000 on their tax returns for tax years 2000 through 2004 and defrauded the IRS by failing to pay payroll taxes on $1.4 million of cash earnings of workers at Dangerous Curves for tax years 2001 through 2004.

No trial date was set yesterday. *