Executive Director of In-Home Care Business Sentenced to Prison for Failing to Pay Quarterly Employment Taxes

AKRON, Ohio – A Lake County man has been sentenced to federal prison for not paying required employment taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Michael Roberts, 38, of Mentor, Ohio, was sentenced to 24 months in prison by U.S. District Judge John R. Adams, after a federal jury convicted him in April of failure to account for and pay taxes. He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $322,718.56 in restitution. Judge Adams imposed the sentence Dec. 3.

According to court documents, Roberts was the executive director and co-owner of Progressive Alternatives, an in-home care business that served individuals with developmental disabilities throughout Lake and Ashtabula Counties. The business was initially purchased by Roberts’s spouse, Larry Keith Gildersleeve III, 43, also of Mentor, in February 2011.

Federal investigators found that the payroll checks that Roberts issued did reflect the correct withholdings from employees’ wages. The withholdings were also reflected on W-2 forms that the employees received. But upon further investigation, it was discovered that the business never filed W-2 forms for employees, nor did they submit quarterly payments. When an employee was preparing to retire in 2017, she learned that her employer, Progressive Alternatives, had not paid the required payroll taxes over to the IRS.

Gildersleeve was previously sentenced to 24 months in prison for his role, after pleading guilty to eight counts of failure to account for and pay over taxes. He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $692,697.50 in restitution.

The IRS-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Division investigated this case.

Assistant United States Attorneys Erica D. Barnhill and Brett S. Hammond prosecuted the case for the Northern District of Ohio.

IRS-CI is the law enforcement 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 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.