Date: Oct. 3, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

FAYETTEVILLE - A Springdale woman was sentenced on Aug. 15, 2024, to 13 years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Yesterday, she was ordered to pay over $3.4 million in restitution on one count of money laundering and one count of Filing a False Income Tax Return. The Honorable Judge Timothy L. Brooks presided over the sentencing hearing in the United States District Court in Fayetteville.

According to court documents, Shelly Jo Ketcher waived indictment by a grand jury and pleaded guilty to a criminal information charging her with money laundering and filing a false income tax return. Ketcher, worked as a bookkeeper and accountant at a Northwest Arkansas company for approximately 5 years. During that time Ketcher embezzled over $2.5 million from the company. Ketcher carried out her scheme in multiple ways including unauthorized and unearned payments to herself, unauthorized payments to credit card companies as well as unauthorized and unearned payments to others who were not employees of the company. In reference to the Filing a false income tax return charge, Ketcher reported false wages and salaries on her personal federal tax returns.

Ketcher's criminal history showed a prior conviction out of the Northern District of Oklahoma in 2006 for wire fraud as well as two Oklahoma state convictions for embezzlement.

U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes of the Western District of Arkansas made the announcement.

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Fayetteville Police Department.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Carly Marshall prosecuted the case for the United States.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.