KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Lafayette County, Missouri, woman who defrauded the government of nearly $2 million in taxes was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in federal prison.
Sandra Eller, 60, owned and operated three companies — Medical Revenue Solutions LLC, which closed in 2017; Claims Professionally Reviewed, which closed in 2016; and Soerries Coding and Institute, which closed in 2019 — in Oak Grove and Grain Valley.
She pleaded guilty in April 2022 to Failure to Account For, Collect, and Pay Over Employment Taxes in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Eller owed $1,990,993 in FICA and income taxes, nearly half of which was withheld from employees’ paychecks at her three medical-billing and claims-processing businesses during a four-year period.
She did not forward the employees’ withholdings nor the FICA, federal unemployment, employment and state taxes her businesses owed to the taxing jurisdictions as required by law.
Instead, Eller spent the money on rent, utilities, payroll and software despite acknowledging that she was delinquent in remitting her payroll taxes beginning in at least 2015, according to the government’s sentencing memorandum.
Despite not paying the money owed to the IRS, Eller claimed credit on her personal taxes for purported withholdings from 2016 to 2018.
After selling SCBI in 2019, she served as CEO at Orthopedic Surgeons Inc. in 2020.
U.S. District Court Judge Beth Phillips sentenced Eller to 18 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. She will report Jan. 13, 2023, according to the sentencing judgment.
Federal sentencing guidelines had called for a sentence of 30 to 37 months, according to court filings.
Phillips also ordered Eller to repay $1,643,200.97 toi the IRS and $186,844 to the Missouri Department of Revenue, though the government acknowledges that is unlikely.
“As a practical matter, Eller will likely never pay anything close to what she owes to the U.S. Government,” according to a filing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “All that can be achieved now is a measure of justice and deterrence.”
Eller will not have to pay interest, because “the court determined that the defendant does not have the ability to pay interest,” according to the sentencing report.
Among the special conditions of her post-prison supervision, Eller will be required to give her probation officer access to her financial records and not to incur new credit charges or open new lines of credit without approval.
She turned over more than $160,000 from the sale of a house in October 2021 to the IRS, according to a separate court filing.
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