GREENSBORO, N.C. - A Greensboro resident was sentenced to prison on July 19, 2017, for tax crimes, announced Sandra J. Hairston, Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.
CHERYL ARRINGTON WHITE, 55, of Greensboro, North Carolina, was sentenced to 33 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $289,172 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service for tax evasion.
According to court documents and court proceedings, WHITE operated White’s Accounting, PA, from her house in Greensboro, North Carolina. WHITE earned money for providing bookkeeping and payroll services to multiple clients located throughout the Middle District of North Carolina. One such client who operated a restaurant and hospitality facility in Surry County, North Carolina received information that WHITE had embezzled from another client, and based on this information, started reviewing their bank statements and cancelled checks online. In doing so, the client found that WHITE was also embezzling from their company. WHITE utilized three separate methods to embezzle funds. WHTIE would write herself additional payroll check and paid personal expenses in her name and spouse’s name using the clients business checking account, forging the business owners’ signatures on those checks. White also paid her children as employees of the client. WHITE was found to have embezzled from at least two other companies. WHITE cashed and/or deposited these fraudulent checks into her or her children’s personal checking accounts.
WHITE admitted to investigators the above conducted and estimated embezzling approximately $1,000,000.00 from her clients. WHITE told investigators that she only calculated her Schedule C income by using figures derived from printing the vendor reports for her accounting business. For the calendar years 2010 through 2014, it was found that WHITE failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service $969,157.91 of income. The total tax loss in this case is $289,172.
The case was investigated by Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Anand Ramaswamy.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
