The co-owner of one of the most active media brokerage firms in the U.S. has pled guilty to filing a false tax return. A possible three-year prison term awaits, along with a period of supervised release, monetary penalties, and restitution, to be determined by a federal district court judge once sentence guidelines and other statutory factors are reviewed.
The plea was made Thursday (8/31) by Susan Patrick, who with her husband Larry Patrick operate Patrick Communications.
The Patricks presently reside in Cody, Wyo., and have been the broker of record on countless deals involving both radio stations and television stations. Among the transactions Susan Patrick was directly involved in are the November 2007 acquisition of WGGB-TV in Springfield, Mass., by Sinclair Broadcast Group; the November 2014 purchase by Hubbard Broadcasting of Omni Broadcasting Company’s 16 full power stations and one FM translator; and a July 2021 transaction involving a Lander, Wyo., AM and FM radio combo acquired by Will Hill’s Kairos Broadcasting.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Susan Patrick hired an accounting firm to prepare business and personal tax returns for 2012 through 2014. Despite receiving the completed and accurate tax returns from the accounting firm, Mrs. Patrick did not file them with the IRS, the Justice Department said.
After the IRS contacted Susan Patrick and requested that she file the unfiled returns, the Justice Department asserts Mrs. Patrick lied to the IRS, claiming that her accounting firm had timely filed the returns and that she would provide copies of those returns.
Patrick did not provide copies of the accurate returns that had in fact been prepared by her accounting firm.
Instead, the Justice Department charges, Susan Patrick doctored the business returns, removing $10 million in gross receipts earned by her brokerage firm. DOJ also claims Mrs. Patrick had altered her personal returns by removing over $9.5 million in income that she and her husband had earned from 2012 through 2014.
Furthermore, the DOJ is accusing Mrs. Patrick of falsely backdating her signature on each tax return to make it appear as if the returns had been timely signed. These documents were then mailed to the IRS, “hoping to evade paying the full amount of taxes she owed,” the DOJ says.
The Justice Department also believes Mrs. Patrick failed to timely file business and individual returns for 2015, which she had also hired the accounting firm to prepare, and did not pay the tax due and owing for the individual return.
In total, Susan Patrick sought to evade more than $2,500,000 in taxes, the DOJ determined.
The announcement was quietly made on August 31 by Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron for the District of Maryland and not widely disseminated until September 2.
IRS-Criminal Investigation is investigating the case, while Assistant Chief Thomas F. Koelbl and Trial Attorney Matthew L. Cofer of the Tax Division are prosecuting the case.
