A Las Vegas cleaning company took taxes out of its employees' paychecks for eleven years and did not pay them over to the IRS. Deborah Meadows, 64, owned A to Z Employment Services LLC, which did carpet, upholstery and roadside cleaning in Nevada, and according to the Justice Department she controlled all of its financial matters. She pleaded guilty on February 12, 2026, to willful failure to account for and pay over trust fund taxes. Sentencing was set for May 21, 2026, and none of the sources used here report the outcome.

What happened

From the first quarter of 2010 through the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the Justice Department, Meadows withheld Social Security, Medicare and income taxes from employee wages. She did not pay them over, and she did not file the required quarterly employment tax returns. The loss to the government exceeded $1.2 million.

That is 44 quarters. Divide $1.2 million by 44 and you get about $27,000 a quarter, and since the release says "exceeding," the real figure is higher. The sources don't say how many employees were on the payroll, so there's no way to turn that into a figure per paycheck.

The concealment came later. After the grand jury began its investigation, the indictment says Meadows answered a subpoena with altered bank records and inaccurate tax records. The altered records showed that another company she owned, AZ-TEC Restoration LLC, had made tax payments to the IRS when it had not. She also provided inaccurate individual and employment tax returns showing taxes paid that she knew had never been paid.

The release says IRS Criminal Investigation led the case. It doesn't say what first drew the IRS's attention.

Why the gap existed

Payroll software does the withholding without being asked. It calculates the tax, deducts it from gross pay, prints the amount on the pay stub and credits a liability account. Everything up to that point is the system doing its job.

Paying the liability is a separate act. Someone has to move the money, and someone has to file the return that says they did. If nobody does, the liability account just keeps growing. Quarter after quarter the balance sits there, and that account is where this kind of failure shows up in plain numbers, if anyone looks.

This is also a case where internal controls have a built-in limit. The sources describe Meadows as owning the company and controlling all financial matters. When the owner is the person not paying, no second approver inside the company is going to stop it. The checks that matter sit outside. The tax authority and the bank hold records the owner can't edit, and an outside accountant can ask them for it.

Controls that would have caught it

Age the payroll tax liability accounts every period. Withholding gets paid on a schedule, so a liability balance that is still open after the deposit date has no good explanation. A growing balance on those accounts goes to someone other than the person who runs payroll.

Check payments against the tax authority's own records. An IRS account transcript shows what was actually received for each quarter, and nobody at the company can edit it. Someone outside payroll, an owner's accountant or an outside CPA, pulls it each quarter and ties it to the payroll register. Better still, a payroll provider that files and remits on the company's behalf leaves its own trail.

Get bank records straight from the bank. The altered bank records in this case were a response to a subpoena, which is late. A routine direct confirmation or a bank-fed statement feed, reviewed by someone outside the finance function, makes that kind of alteration much harder to do and much easier to see.

An AI prompt example for ERP fraud detection

This case calls for queries that compare what was withheld to what was paid. Against an ERP's payroll and general ledger modules, a controller or outside accountant could run something like:

"For each quarter in the last twelve years, list total federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare withheld per the payroll register, the total paid to the tax authority per the bank and cash records, and the difference. Flag every quarter where the difference is not zero."

A second query goes after the ledger itself:

"List all payroll tax liability accounts with a balance more than 90 days old and no payment against it, by tax type and quarter, with the user who last posted to each account."

The first query only works if payments to the tax authority are recorded somewhere the system can see them. In some ERPs they are not, which is a finding in itself.

The pattern for this series

Most of the recent cases in this series had an employer as the victim. Here the money withheld was never the company's, and the thing that went missing was a payment, not a record. The release doesn't say how the IRS first noticed.

Source disclaimer

The case details in this article are drawn from press releases published by the U.S. Department of Justice, a public government source. All facts, figures, and quotations describing the case are sourced from those releases. This article reports a guilty plea; a sentencing outcome was not available in the sources used. The concealment details first appeared in the indictment release as allegations, and the plea release restates them. The analysis of the control gap, the proposed detection controls, and the AI prompt examples are original commentary and are not part of the source material.

References

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. Press release on the guilty plea of Deborah Meadows to employment tax crimes, February 12, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/cleaning-service-owner-pleads-guilty-employment-tax-crimes

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. Press release on the indictment of Deborah Meadows for an employment tax scheme, January 10, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/cleaning-service-owner-charged-employment-tax-scheme-and-other-crimes

---

More of my writing lives at A Tinkerers Notebook.

My book Gamifying the Enterprise: Game Mechanics for Continuous Proficiency is on Amazon. All my books are on my Amazon author page.

The AD&D365 configuration guides are at adnd365.com/start.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.

For about fifty months, a Long Island healthcare products distributor wired out money as customer refunds, and it landed in an account its own credit supervisor controlled. Tony Ream worked in the credit department of the Melville, New York company from 2019 and later became a credit supervisor. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud on September 25, 2025. Reporting on the case says he was sentenced on September 24, 2026, to 30 months in federal prison, with $1.6 million in restitution.

What happened

From about October 2020 through November 2024, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, Ream sent wire transfers totaling approximately $1.6 million from the company's bank account to an account he controlled. Each transaction was recorded as a refund issued to a customer. The release says he took the money from customer refund accounts, and press coverage says some of those accounts were inactive.

A court filing in the case describes the sequence. Ream directed subordinates to initiate a refund. After the refund was initiated, he approved it and disbursed it to the account in his name. The release adds that he deceived employees he supervised "into taking steps that assisted him in carrying out his fraudulent scheme."

Divide $1.6 million by the fifty months from October 2020 through November 2024 and you get about $32,000 a month. Both the total and the period are approximate in the sources, so treat that as a ballpark. The sources don't say how many refunds there were, and they don't say how the scheme was found.

Why the gap existed

A refund is a payment, and nobody argues with a refund. The customer overpaid, or returned something, or has a credit sitting on the account. Somebody in credit is the right person to say so. Credit sits close to both the money going out and the explanation for it.

The court filing describes a clean division of labor. A subordinate initiates and the supervisor approves. The problem is that the approver was also the person steering the destination, and the subordinates didn't know what they were feeding. Two people touched each refund on paper. The second one was steering the money.

Inactive accounts make it worse. A customer who stopped ordering years ago isn't going to call and ask where the refund is. A credit balance that nobody has touched since 2019 is a balance that nobody will miss. The sources don't say whether anyone outside the credit department reviewed those balances.

Controls that would have caught it

Pay refunds only to a destination already on the customer record. A refund goes back to the payment method it came from, or to a bank account in the customer master that someone outside credit has verified. A destination that isn't on file stops the refund until it has been checked, whoever approves it.

Make the approver independent of the initiator's chain of command. A supervisor shouldn't approve refunds that his own team initiates, at least above a set amount. Better still, the approval comes from finance, and a sample of the supervisor's own approvals gets re-performed each month by someone else.

Review dormant credit balances outside the credit department. Customer accounts with no activity for twelve months and a credit balance go on a list that accounts payable or the controller owns. Refunding one needs the original payment, a customer request, and a second person.

An AI prompt example for ERP fraud detection

This case calls for queries about where refunds went and about accounts that were quiet. Against an ERP's accounts receivable and cash management modules, a controller could run something like:

"For the last five years, list every customer refund where the destination bank account holder name does not match the customer name or any bank account on the customer master. Include the user who initiated the refund, the user who approved it, and the amount."

A second query goes after the quiet accounts:

"List refunds issued on customer accounts that had no invoices or receipts in the previous twelve months, grouped by approver, and rank approvers by total value."

Neither query depends on knowing whose name to look for. Both depend on the refund record keeping a destination account in a field somebody can read.

The pattern for this series

Part 12 was a finance chief with the power to delete records. Here the supervisor didn't delete anything. He used the approval step as cover, and the people below him did the initiating. The release doesn't say what prompted the investigation or when the company first noticed.

Source disclaimer

The case details in this article are drawn from press releases published by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, a public government source, a court filing in the case, and contemporaneous news reporting on the same case. All facts, figures, and quotations describing the case are sourced from those releases and reports. The sentence reported here comes from news coverage, because I could not open the sentencing release itself. The analysis of the control gap, the proposed detection controls, and the AI prompt examples are original commentary and are not part of the source material.

References

United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York. Press release on the indictment of Tony Ream for stealing from customer credit accounts. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/manager-long-island-company-indicted-stealing-16-million-customer-credit-accounts

United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York. Press release on the guilty plea of Tony Ream, September 25, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/manager-long-island-company-pleads-guilty-wire-fraud-stealing-customer-credit-accounts

Becker's Dental Review. "Former credit supervisor sentenced to 30 months for embezzling $1.6M from dental supply company." https://www.beckersdental.com/?p=27271

---

More of my writing lives at A Tinkerers Notebook.

My book Gamifying the Enterprise: Game Mechanics for Continuous Proficiency is on Amazon. All my books are on my Amazon author page.

The AD&D365 configuration guides are at adnd365.com/start.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.

A backhoe and dump truck business billed an industrial explosives company on 373 invoices between 2016 and 2023, and the invoices were either inflated or for work nobody did. Barry Anderson, 68, of Findlay, Ohio, a 20-plus-year employee of the company, pleaded guilty on April 17, 2026, to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and to mail fraud. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio announced the plea on April 20. No sentencing date had been set.

What happened

According to the release, Anderson worked with Gregory Shuey, who owned the backhoe and dump truck business. Anderson "directed the business owner either to greatly inflate the invoices or create fake invoices for services that were never performed." Then Anderson paid them on behalf of his employer.

Shuey deposited the checks into an account he controlled and gave Anderson a 50 percent cut of the money. The employer paid about $2,432,844 in fraudulent invoices to Shuey's business. Divide that by 373 and you get roughly $6,522 an invoice, assuming all 373 were paid. Small enough to sail through most approval limits.

There is a second scheme. From 2014 to 2023, Anderson was linked to 34 invoices seeking rental payments from his employer, about $954,330 in all, or roughly $28,069 each. He caused the employer to enter the lease agreements "under false pretenses by concealing the fact that he and his confederates were benefitting financially from the deals."

The headline figure is $3.7 million. The two amounts above add up to $3,387,174, and the release also says Anderson embezzled approximately $400,000 through the invoice scheme. It doesn't reconcile these. The release doesn't name the employer or say how the scheme was found.

Why the gap existed

An invoice from a real vendor, for a service, approved by a manager with authority to approve it, is the most normal document in accounts payable. Nothing about it looks wrong. What was wrong was the relationship behind it, and no field in a vendor record holds that.

The release says Anderson paid the invoices on his employer's behalf. It doesn't say who asked for the work or who confirmed it was done. Services leave nothing in a warehouse to count. A dump truck hauled something, or didn't, and the only evidence is whoever signs.

The lease side has the same shape. The fact that mattered was who stood behind the landlord. The sources don't say how the employer checked ownership of the properties, or whether anybody did.

Controls that would have caught it

Separate the person who requests a service from the person who approves payment for it. For a vendor billing above a set annual total, a second approver in finance or procurement confirms there was a work order, and a completion record from someone who saw the work or can check it independently.

Benchmark service rates and watch one vendor's volume. A single small vendor sending 373 invoices to one manager is a pattern. Compare rates per hour or per load against other vendors and against the same vendor's other customers where the data exists, and flag the ones that sit well above.

Disclose and verify who owns the landlord. Before the company signs or renews a lease, whoever negotiated it attests in writing to any financial interest, and someone outside the business line checks the owner against public property and business records. Then repeat the check on a schedule, because ownership changes.

An AI prompt example for ERP fraud detection

This case calls for queries on approval concentration and on who is behind a payee. Against an ERP's accounts payable and vendor master, a controller could run something like:

"For the last ten years, list each vendor where more than 80 percent of invoice value was approved by one user, and rank them by total paid. Include the average invoice amount and the count of invoices with no matching work order or completion record."

A second query goes after the lease and landlord side:

"List all recurring rent and lease payees, with the bank account holder name, registered address and any shared address, phone number or bank account with an employee record or with another vendor."

Neither query proves anything. Both build a short list for a person to go and ask about, and the second only works if somebody has kept the vendor master clean.

The pattern for this series

Part 11 was about an approver with a conflict of interest. This one is the same problem with a real vendor in the middle, which makes it harder to see. The release doesn't say what prompted the investigation.

Source disclaimer

The case details in this article are drawn from a press release published by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio, a public government source, along with contemporaneous news reporting on the same case. All facts, figures, and quotations describing the case are sourced from those releases and reports. This article reports a guilty plea; a sentencing outcome was not available in the sources used. The analysis of the control gap, the proposed detection controls, and the AI prompt examples are original commentary and are not part of the source material.

References

United States Attorney's Office, Northern District of Ohio. "Ohio Man Pleads Guilty to Role in $3.7M Embezzlement Scheme." Press release, April 20, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndoh/pr/ohio-man-pleads-guilty-role-37m-embezzlement-scheme

Cleveland 19 News. "Findlay man pleads guilty in $3.7M embezzlement scheme." April 20, 2026. https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/04/20/findlay-man-pleads-guilty-37m-embezzlement-scheme/

---

More of my writing lives at A Tinkerers Notebook.

My book Gamifying the Enterprise: Game Mechanics for Continuous Proficiency is on Amazon. All my books are on my Amazon author page.

The AD&D365 configuration guides are at adnd365.com/start.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.

A Home Depot gift card sales associate stole 8,325 physical gift cards with a combined value of $4,085,043. Felecia Ingram, 53, of Covington, Georgia, had worked for the company since 2008. She pleaded guilty to access device fraud on May 1, 2025, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced her sentence on February 26, 2026: three years and one month in prison.

What happened

From March 2020 through July 2021, according to the release, Ingram used her network access credentials to activate the stolen cards by creating false orders for them. News coverage says the orders made the cards look like they were meant for corporate events. After the cards were live, she deleted the false orders.

That is seventeen months. Divide the card value by the card count and each one averaged about $491.

The release says Home Depot found the fraud when its gift card team spotted a discrepancy in the gift card ledger balances. It does not say when the discrepancy first appeared, or how long it sat there.

Restitution came to $3,946,776, which is $138,267 below the face value of the cards. The release doesn't explain the gap.

Why the gap existed

Activating a gift card creates spendable value. That makes it a payment, whatever the system calls it. In this case the thing that triggered the activation was an order, and an order is a document an associate with the right access can create.

The deletion is what made it work. A false order sitting in the system next to an activated card is a question somebody can ask. A false order that has been removed leaves a card with value on it and nothing behind it. Nobody knows what to look up.

The sources describe the access in one phrase, network access credentials, and say nothing about what else those credentials allowed. They also don't say whether anyone approved the orders or whether activation waited on payment. If it did neither, the ledger was the only check left, and the ledger caught it.

Controls that would have caught it

Activation tied to a settled payment. A card shouldn't go live until payment has cleared against the order, or until a second person has approved a corporate order on the record. An order that creates value without settled payment should sit in a queue, not turn on a card.

No deleting orders that activated stored value. Cancel or void them, keep the original, and require a reason and a second approver. Whoever can create the order should not be the person who can remove it.

Physical stock counted against activations. Inactive cards are inventory, serial numbers included. A regular count of the cards on the shelf, compared to the cards sold and the cards activated on approved orders, turns a missing box into a number.

An AI prompt example for ERP fraud detection

This case calls for queries about activation, not about transactions after the fact. Against an ERP's order management and stored-value ledger, a controller could run something like:

"List all orders from the last three years that activated stored-value cards where no payment settled against the order, or where the order was later cancelled or deleted, grouped by the user who created it."

A second query goes after the stock:

"For each day, compare the count and face value of gift cards activated against cards sold at registers and cards on approved bulk orders, and flag any day where activations exceed both."

Neither query depends on knowing who to suspect. Both depend on the system keeping a record of deleted orders. In some systems that is a setting somebody has to turn on.

The pattern for this series

Part 12 was a CFO deleting credit card charges. This was an associate deleting orders. The release doesn't say how long the discrepancy had been in the ledger before the gift card team saw it.

Source disclaimer

The case details in this article are drawn from a press release published by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, a public government source, along with contemporaneous news reporting on the same case. All facts, figures, and quotations describing the case are sourced from those releases and reports. The analysis of the control gap, the proposed detection controls, and the AI prompt examples are original commentary and are not part of the source material.

References

United States Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia. Press release on the sentencing of Felecia Ingram for stealing gift cards from The Home Depot, February 26, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-home-depot-associate-sentenced-federal-prison-stealing-more-4-million-company

The Covington News. "Covington woman sentenced to prison after stealing $4 million in gift cards from Home Depot." https://www.covnews.com/news/crime/covington-woman-sentenced-to-prison-after-stealing-4-million-in-gift-cards-from-home-depot/

---

More of my writing lives at A Tinkerers Notebook.

My book Gamifying the Enterprise: Game Mechanics for Continuous Proficiency is on Amazon. All my books are on my Amazon author page.

The AD&D365 configuration guides are at adnd365.com/start.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.