Accountant Gets 3 years in Prison For Failing to Pay Over $1 Million in Payroll Taxes

Carrie Leigh Long, the accountant for a company that makes luxury limousines and buses, was sentenced for embezzling $362,000 and failing to pay over more than $1 million in payroll and personal taxes. Long stole a total of 198 times between 2016 and 2019, using a stock of pre-signed checks to pay herself unauthorized amounts and also forged checks made out to herself. She did not claim any of the stolen money on her tax returns, causing the IRS a loss of $65,039.

Beginning in 2019, Long stopped paying payroll taxes, both the ones owed by her employer and the ones collected from employee salaries. She failed to pay $902,226 in payroll taxes, which gave her a bigger pool of money to steal from. Long was on probation while pursuing this scheme, for embezzling $88,000 from a client of her previous employer. In that case her mother paid the victim back the $88,000. Long used some of the newly embezzled funds to pay her mother back.

She was sentenced to three years and five months in prison without parole, and ordered to pay $362,175 to her employer and $1,071,802 to the IRS. The court also ordered Long to forfeit to the government $362,175.

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