Ash Grove’s Long charged with stealing $362K

Suspect also faces charges of failure to pay employment taxes, filing a false tax return
 
An Ash Grove woman is facing numerous felony charges in federal court after being accused of stealing $362,175 from Executive Coach Builders and Executive Bus Builders (the companies), where she worked as an accountant. Carrie Leigh Long, 52, faces 17 counts of wire fraud, six counts of failure to pay taxes over to the IRS, one count of the obstruction of the administration of Internal Revenue Laws and five counts of filing a false tax return.

The indictment
Long was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday, Nov 17. According to the indictment, Long allegedly used her position at the companies to write checks to herself. The indictment claimed that while Long did not have signing authority on the company’s accounts, another accountant who did have signing authority pre-signed a number of blank checks; these checks were then given to Long to fill out to pay outstanding invoices while the accountant was away on business. Instead, the indictment claimed, Long allegedly used these checks to make unauthorized payments to herself. She was also accused of forging the signatures of authorized signers on checks which she allegedly wrote to herself and then electronically present the checks to her bank to be deposited into her personal checking account. To hide her actions, she allegedly did not include the pre-signed and forged checks in her financial reports. The indictment alleges that Long stole $27,175 in 2016, $57,500 in 2017, $94,500 in 2018, $103,000 in 2019 and $80,000.

Wire fraud
Long faces 17 counts of wire fraud. According to the indictment, she allegedly used wire communications to make 17 deposits into her checking account; the deposits were debited against the companies’ checking accounts. The alleged deposits were made between Nov. 28, 2016 and Sept. 23, 2020, and ranged in amounts from $1,200 to $2,500 each. The indictment stated each deposit constitutes a separate violation.

Failure to pay over tax
Long faces six counts of failure to pay over taxes to the IRS. According to the indictment, Long “had the corporate responsibility to collect, truthfully account for, and pay over the companies’ employment taxes to the IRS through the EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System) about every three months. However, Long allegedly stopped making the payments around April of 2019 and then altered the companies’ bank account statements and misrepresented on her financial reports to make it look like she had made the payments.
The indictment accused Long of causing the companies to fail to pay $902,226.13 to the IRS between the second quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020; a total of $181,162.95 for Executive Bus Builders over the three quarters, and $362,812.01 for Executive Coach Builders. The indictment stated that each quarter she failed to pay the taxes for each company constitutes a separate violation.
The indictment also alleged that Long stole $80,000 from the companies during these three quarters.

Obstruction charge
Long is charged with one count of obstructing the Administration of Internal Revenue Laws. The indictment stated that Long received a phone message on Jan. 13, 2020 from a Revenue Officer asking her to return the call by the end of the day, but she failed to do so. On March 2, 2020 the officer also sent Long an appointment letter regarding the companies’ delinquent taxes, which the indictment said Long received and read.

Long allegedly failed to turn over requested documentation
The Officer next contacted Long and her supervisor at the companies on March 18, 2020 in an attempt to collect the $500,000 in delinquent taxes the companies owed. Long allegedly told the Officer that the companies’ employment taxes had been paid “every week” and that the companies’ bank accounts were reviewed every week to make certain the payments had cleared. Long’s superior then told her to gather up documentation that the payments had been made and provide them to the Revenue officer.
However, according to the indictment, about a week later, Long still had not provided the documents, so the Officer contacted Long’s superior with a list of documents to provide the IRS. Long was then directed to provide the documents to the IRS, but several weeks later, had still failed to do so.
Long’s superior then asked an accounting firm to investigate and see whether the companies’ payroll taxes had been paid to the IRS and directed Long to provide the firm with the information requested by the IRS.

Long allegedly altered bank statements
The indictment stated that Long provided an accountant at the firm with the companies’ bank statements which purported to show several payments made to the IRS, which the accountant then gave to the Revenue Officer. However, when the Officer compared the bank statements to EFTPS, the indictment said, the payments on the bank statements did not match the EFTPS.
The indictment claimed that the payments did not match the EFTPS because Long had altered the bank statements to make payments made to other entities look like payments to the IRS. For example, Long allegedly altered the payee and amount of a payment in a Feb. 12, 2020 transaction “to make it appear that a $15,316.31 payment had been made to the IRS, when in fact the payment had been made to a vendor in the amount of $1,800.”

Filing false returns
The five remaining charges against Long on the indictment are for filing false claims on her tax returns. Long is accused of not reporting the money she allegedly stole from the companies for tax years 2016 through 2020 as income on her tax returns for those years.
Long was arrested on Thursday, Nov. 18, and booked into the Greene County Jail. As of press time, she continued to be held there without bond.