BOSTON – The proprietor of a firm that supplied payroll and payroll tax products and services to small companies in New England was sentenced on Thursday, July 22, 2021 for defrauding customers by diverting the money her consumers established aside for payroll taxes. 

Patricia Lindau, 65, of Newburg, Maine, was sentenced by U.S. District Courtroom Decide Denise J. Casper to three yrs in jail and two yrs of supervised launch. Lindau was also requested to pay out restitution of $1,422,122 and forfeiture of $1,121,292. On Feb. 24, 2021, Lindau pleaded responsible to one rely of wire fraud and 1 depend of tax evasion.

Concerning 2017 and the spring of 2020, Lindau engaged in a plan to defraud a lot of of her consumers by failing to pay above to the Internal Earnings Services (IRS) and Massachusetts Office of Earnings (DOR) the payroll taxes that she withdrew from her clients’ bank accounts. Lindau used her entry to her clients’ accounts to transfer money that her shoppers intended to use to satisfy their payroll tax liabilities into her firm’s enterprise examining account. Lindau then despatched just about every client a weekly report falsely indicating that she experienced paid out the resources about to the IRS and DOR.  

When Lindau’s consumers acquired letters from the IRS and DOR indicating that their payroll taxes experienced not been paid out, Lindau lied to the customers and falsely told them that the letters had been a miscalculation and that she would choose treatment of it. In some cases, she then paid the taxes late.

Lindau’s scheme ongoing into the to start with quarter of 2020 when most of her clients closed due to COVID-19 and then discovered that their employees’ payroll taxes had not been and were not being paid out. 

In excess of the study course of the scheme, Lindau unsuccessful to pay back around when thanks much more than $2 million and triggered a internet decline to her clients of over $1.1 million.  

Acting United States Lawyer Nathaniel R. Mendell Ramsey E. Covington, Performing Exclusive Agent in Demand of the Inside Income Service’s Criminal Investigation and John Hayes, Director of the Felony Investigations Bureau, Massachusetts Office of Revenue designed the announcement now. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Miron Bloom and Mackenzie Queenin of Mendell’s Securities, Fiscal & Cyber Fraud Device prosecuted the situation.