A former Maryland woman was sentenced today to 15 months in prison for filing a false tax return.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Susan K. Patrick, now a resident of Cody, co-owned a media brokerage firm with her husband and hired an accounting firm to prepare business and personal tax returns for 2012 through 2014. Despite receiving the completed and accurate tax returns from the accounting firm, Patrick did not file them with the IRS. After the IRS contacted Patrick and requested that she file the unfiled returns, Patrick lied to the IRS, claiming that her accounting firm had timely filed the returns and that she would provide copies of those returns.
Patrick, however, did not provide copies of the accurate returns that had been prepared by her accounting firm. Instead, Patrick doctored the business returns, removing $10 million in gross receipts received by her brokerage firm, and altered the personal returns by removing over $9.5 million in related income that she and her husband had earned from 2012 through 2014. Patrick also falsely backdated her signature on each tax return to make it appear as if the returns had been timely signed and mailed these false documents to the IRS, hoping to evade paying the full amount of taxes she owed.
In addition, Patrick did not timely file business and individual returns for 2015, which she had also hired the accounting firm to prepare, nor did she pay the tax due and owing for the individual return.
In total, Patrick sought to evade more than $2.5 million in taxes.
In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III for the District of Maryland ordered Patrick to serve one year of supervised release and to pay approximately $3,843,922 in restitution to the United States.