Man held in theft of $4.3M in tax funds

The IRS sent bills to people who had given the tax
preparer money to pay their taxes.

DAYTON (AP) — A man is accused of stealing $4.3 million from clients of his Ohio tax preparation business, and using the money to buy a Lamborghini and to write checks worth thousands at Las Vegas casinos.

Rodney R. Richley II, 59, received the money from at least 36 clients between 2000 and 2003 by falsely promising that payments would be made to the Internal Revenue Service, a federal indictment said.

He also filed false tax returns for clients by underreporting how much they owed in employment taxes, the indictment said.

Richley, of Cape Coral, Fla., owned and operated Kettering-based Payroll Data Services Inc. from 1990 until 2003.

IRS agents arrested him Aug. 1 in Boca Raton, Fla.

He’s charged with 36 counts that include willful failure to file a corporate tax return, money laundering of more than $10,000, mail fraud and tax evasion.

Richley pleaded innocent to the charges Tuesday in U.S. District Court. No bond was set and he remains in federal custody. His attorney, Dennis Lieberman, declined to comment.

Money laundering is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, while each count of tax evasion carries a maximum penalty of five years.

Payroll Data Services had 170 clients in the Dayton area, U.S. Attorney Greg Lockhart said.

Some of Richley’s clients received bills for taxes they thought were already paid when the IRS started double-checking records in 2003.

One former client, Federal Holdings, went out of business after the company realized it had never made more than $1 million in tax payments, company officials said in 2004.

Another Ohio business, Miami-Cast of Miamisburg, won a judgment of $166,000 in 2004 against Richley and Payroll Data Services.