Last week, the Department of Justice reported on several employment tax fraud cases.
In Virginia, James C. Jones, Jr., an ambulance business owner, was arraigned and charged with multiple crimes including tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Mr. Jones allegedly withheld payroll taxes from his employees’ paychecks but willfully failed to pay those employment taxes to the IRS. He also made false claims on IRS forms, including his 2013 through 2018 individual income tax returns, transferred his assets to foreign entities, and submitted false applications to the Social Security Administration. If convicted for the tax evasion charge alone, Mr. Jones faces up to five years in prison.
In Louisiana, siblings Randy A. Farrell, Sr., David Farrell, and Dawn Farrell Ruiz, each face a maximum of five years in prison as well. The family owns and operates a construction and building business; they are accused of conspiring to conceal their income from the IRS in multiple ways, including failing to report the profit from the sale of one of their construction companies, and reporting gambling losses as business expenses.
Also in Louisiana, Diann Clark, a bookkeeper responsible for an architecture firm’s payroll, also failed to pay taxes to the IRS she reportedly knew were withheld from the firm’s employees’ paychecks. She caused the IRS a tax loss of nearly $2 million and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
To read all of the latest tax news from the Department of Justice, click here.
