Long sentenced to prison for wire fraud, failure to pay income tax

An Ash Grove woman was sentenced to spend three years and five months in federal prison on Tuesday, Sept. 13, for wire fraud and failure to pay employment taxes. Carrie Leigh Long, 52, received the sentence some five months after she pleaded guilty to the charges at the federal courthouse in Springfield. As part of her plea agreement, 27 other charges against her were dismissed.
At her sentencing, Long was also ordered to pay a total of $1,329,440 in restitution, including $362,175 to her former employer, Executive Coach Builders/Executive Bus Builders, and $1,071,802 to the IRS. She was also ordered to forfeit $362,175 to the federal government.
The Commonwealth previously reported that Long, who was an accountant at Executive Coach Builders/Executive Bus Builders (The Companies) in Springfield, used her position to write checks to herself. According to the plea agreement in the case, 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, Long 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.
According to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office, Long pleaded guilty in October of 2013 in Laclede County to stealing $88,000 from a client of an accounting firm she worked for at the time; she received 90 days of shock time incarceration, five years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution to the victim in that case. The press release stated that Long’s mother paid the restitution to the victim, and that Long used the funds she took from her former employer to repay her mother.