Jonathan Wichman was sentenced to 24 months in prison for evading income taxes for seven years, despite making more than 2.3 million dollars in wages during that time.
Beginning in 2014 Whitman stopped filing tax returns, despite receiving multiple notices from the IRS. In 2019, he filed returns for 2014 through 2018, but did not make any payments.
In October of 2018, Wichman accessed his employer’s online payroll system and changed his withholdings so that no federal income taxes or employment taxes were withheld from his 2019 and 2020 wages. He also did not file tax returns for those two years.
During the trial, Wichman claimed that he didn’t have the money to pay his past due taxes, but it was revealed that between 2018 and 2021 Wichman made cash transactions at several casinos and banks totaling more than a million dollars. From 2014 to 2022 he spent more than $513,000 on luxury cars, a travel trailer and a Florida vacation.
Wichman evaded $276,244 in income taxes owed to the IRS and the state of Arkansas. In addition to the prison sentence, he was ordered to pay $448,592 in restitution, which included penalties and interest.