‘The restaurant remains open’: Gee, Ursula stunned by Capitol Hill business owner’s alleged $1.5M tax scheme

A Capitol Hill restaurant owner has been federally charged with failing to pay nearly $1.5 million in payroll taxes after stealing money from employees’ paychecks for nearly a decade and keeping it rather than sending it to the IRS.

Rory McCormick, owner of Single Shot Kitchen and Saloon, allegedly withheld more than $1 million from employees’ paychecks between 2014 and 2024, and is also accused of failing to pay another $419,000 in taxes, according to the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.

“Get this though: the restaurant remains open,” KIRO host Ursula Reutin said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “McCormick is scheduled to be arraigned next week, and his attorneys are not commenting.”

All KIRO host Gee Scott had to say was “wow,” before he dove deeper into how the Capitol Hill business owner’s scheme ran for so long until he was caught.

“Think about this: Where did he start? How did it get to $1.5 million?” Gee asked. “Like, when was the day … I’m quite sure that when he decided to do this, he didn’t say to himself, ‘I’m going to try to see if I can get away with $1.5 million. I’m sure he started off very small and said, ‘Just this payroll this week, I’ll keep the money here,’ and then it got easier and easier, and then it got to $1.5 million.”

Conversation shifts to how society judges this kind of crime

Ursula wondered if some people would view this crime in a different light when compared to other scams, considering the money he stole was from the government rather than the employees themselves.

“I need to ask a question though, do you put this in the same category as other kinds of scams, trying to get money or knowing you’re doing something wrong. Or do you justify it saying, ‘Well, he was a business owner, he was employing people, and the government sucks and takes too much of our money, so I don’t blame him,'” Ursula said.

“I put it in the same category [as other scams]. It’s all the same,” Gee responded. “It started small, and it got big. This is the same exact thing. There would be justification, like, ‘This is different. He actually was employing people, so that’s a good thing, right? He really didn’t steal from the people because he just didn’t pay the government. So that’s different.’ Is it?”

Gee argues political affiliation often shapes how people judge such crimes

Ursula agreed, noting that people can find excuses to make themselves believe what the owner did wasn’t wrong, but at the end of the day, he was lying and stealing.

“I mean, I think you can do all sorts of mental gymnastics, but basically being dishonest, stealing, making reasons for doing things that you know are illegal, I do put it in the same category,” Ursula said. “I think, just as a society, we generally look at it differently.”

“It’s amazing how we justify, especially when we justify based on political affiliation,” Gee responded. “Basically, we will say, ‘If I’m on this side of things, I will talk about that person that did something.’ But if it’s on the other side of things, we love to have a deaf ear and look away from those.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.