A Christiansburg businessman was sentenced Tuesday to 78 months in prison for evading the payment of employment taxes, filing false tax returns and obstructing the IRS.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between approximately January 2008 through December 2009, James C. Jones Jr. owned and operated Lifeline Ambulance Service Inc. He was responsible for paying to the IRS approximately $200,000 in Social Security, Medicare and income taxes withheld from his employees’ wages. After Jones failed to do so, the IRS assessed the outstanding employment taxes against him personally.
When the IRS attempted to collect those taxes, Jones lied, claiming that he did not have the assets to pay the taxes. In fact, Jones owned several Caribbean beachfront condominiums, multiple foreign bank accounts and a classic “muscle” car collection. Jones later continued trying to thwart the IRS’s collection efforts by filing false 2013 through 2018 tax returns that did not report the rental income from his Caribbean properties and claimed false deductions.
After Jones received a subpoena for records of foreign bank accounts from the Justice Department, he falsely reported that he did not have any responsive records, when in fact, he possessed those records as the director and owner of a number of foreign holding companies.
Jones’s conduct caused a tax loss to the IRS of at least $1.5 million.
In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Michael F. Urbanski for the Western District of Virginia ordered Jones to serve three years supervised release and pay a fine of $250,000 and $394,508 in restitution to the United States. Jones was also ordered to pay the costs of prosecution.
Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh for the Western District of Virginia and Special Agent in Charge Kareem Carter of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s Washington D.C. Field Office made the announcement.
U.S. District Court, Department of Justice
