Suburban Chicago businessman sentenced to a year in prison for underreporting $1.47 million in taxes

Date: Aug. 19, 2024

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CHICAGO - The owner of three Chicago-area childcare and transportation businesses has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for underreporting more than $1.47 million in income on his tax returns.

Jeremiah Johnson owned New Beginnings Academy, New Beginnings Child Development, and Epic Transportation. During the calendar years 2015 to 2020, Johnson obtained more than $1.47 million of income from the operation of those businesses but failed to report the money on his individual tax returns. Johnson filed individual tax returns for those years but reported lesser W2 wages and some rental income. The failure to disclose the additional income he received from his businesses resulted in the preparation and filing of materially false individual income tax returns.

During the same time period, Johnson also failed to file corporate tax returns or pay any of the required employer and employee withholdings for federal income tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare.

Johnson of Frankfort, Ill., pleaded guilty earlier this year to a federal charge of filing a false tax return. In addition to the year-and-a-day prison term, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly on Wednesday fined Johnson $10,000 and ordered him to pay $123,391 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Ramsey E. Covington, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) Chicago Field Office. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen Totten and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick J. King, Jr.

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. 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.