Owner Of Regional Healthcare, Llc Pleads Guilty To $2.5 Million Payroll Tax Fraud Scheme

BATON ROUGE, LA - United States Attorney Walt Green announced today that CHARLES A. LANPHIER, age 68, of Lafayette, Louisiana, has pled guilty to a Bill of Information charging him with two counts of failing to truthfully account for and pay over taxes, in violation of Title 26, United States Code, Section 7202. LANPHIER faces significant incarceration, fines, and restitution orders.

According to the factual stipulation contained in the defendant’s written plea agreement with the United States, at all relevant times, LANPHIER owned and controlled Regional Healthcare, LLC (“Regional”), a health care company with operations throughout Louisiana and Florida. Regional operated through eleven (11) different corporate entities, and provided four different types of service, including patient care assistance, home health services, extended home health service (also known as pediatric care), and hospice services.

Regional was required to collect payroll taxes from its employees, make deposits of the payroll taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) on a periodic basis, and file quarterly federal income tax returns. As the defendant has admitted, however, throughout the tax years 2008 through 2011, as LANPHIER was causing Regional to withhold tax payments from its employees’ paychecks, LANPHIER knowingly and willfully failed to file the quarterly employment tax returns and knowingly and willfully failed to forward payroll taxes to the IRS. In total, during the tax years 2008 through 2011, LANPHIER failed to make payments on Regional’s behalf totaling more than $2.5 million. LANPHIER’s sentencing date has not been set.

This matter is being handled by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana and the New Orleans Office of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Alan A. Stevens, who serves as a Deputy Chief in the Criminal Division.