Sometimes criminals seem to get off way too easy. Take Mr. Christopher J. Smyth of Pineville, West Virgina. Mr. Smyth owned Stat EMS, an emergency medical service (EMS) business (aka an ambulance business). Mr. Smythe racked up over $4.6 million in trust fund penalties for pilfering income taxes withheld from his employees for over a decade.
And this wasn’t the first time! Mr. Smyth created Stat EMS after his previous EMS business went bankrupt for, you guessed it, unpaid employment tax liabilities.
This time around, Mr. Smyth received three years of prison time for corruption and forcible interference with administration of internal revenue laws and a super-duper cumbersome repayment plan:
- $25 to be paid per quarter during his three-year incarceration period; then
- Monthly payments of not less than 15% of his monthly gross earnings with a minimum of $100 per month.
Now, when Mr. Smyth was interviewed by an IRS revenue officer, he stated that he had no personal bank accounts and denied that he used anyone else’s. In reality, he made regular deposits into a relative’s bank account and tried denying that he had any involvement in a series of other businesses, despite having signature authority over their bank accounts.
Something tells me that Mr. Smyth is experienced at hiding his income and assets (at least on paper), so the chances of the federal government collecting more than the minimum $100 per month from him once his incarceration ends seems like a stretch. At that rate, in his lifetime, he’ll never repay even a couple of months’ worth of interest on $4.6 million.
I, for one, am not that kind. Mr. Smyth is the type of person who makes you want to bring back good old fashioned medieval English punishments. Maybe I’m mean and cruel, but that’s okay with me. Mark me down as one year older and one year more curmudgeonly.
