A federal judge in Cleveland has sentenced a 66-year-old Nimishillen Township woman to 30 months in prison for tax evasion tied to a trucking business she operated.
At the end of the sentencing on Dec. 2., U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent directed the U.S. Marshal’s officers to take Alice F. Martin into custody to begin her sentence.
This was after she had pleaded guilty Aug. 18 to two counts of tax evasion. She had been free on an unsecured bond of $20,000 since her arrest in May 2024.
Nugent also ordered Martin to pay $1.97 million in restitution to the federal government. After she’s released from prison, she’ll be under the supervision of a probation officer for three years.
Alice Martin sentencing memo
The U.S. attorney’s office in a Nov. 25 memo to Nugent accused Martin, while her attorneys negotiated a plea agreement, of committing additional acts of tax evasion and transferring millions in assets, like real estate holdings, a $1.3 million Clearwater, Florida, vacation home and vehicles, to her husband “out of the reach of the IRS.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Byrdle accused Martin of concealing or trying to conceal her assets from a federal probation officer and refusing to turn over bank statements. Prosecutors recommended 24 months in prison.
The judge accepted the prosecutors’ recommendation except he tacked on six more months.
A message seeking comment was left the evening of Dec. 3 for Martin’s Cleveland-based attorney Steven Bradley.
In Bradley’s written response to prosecutors’ memo, he called for no prison time, perhaps house arrest and community service.
Bradley argued that Martin had admitted committing tax evasion and accepted responsibility, was remorseful, had cooperated with probation officials and “blames no one but herself” for her “lack of diligence and discipline.”
Bradley wrote, “Alice is committed to making things right with the IRS. All outstanding tax returns will be filed by the end of the 2025 calendar year.
“A custodial sentence is unnecessary. Alice has already experienced the punishment that comes with being known to her neighbors, church members and professional colleagues as a convicted federal felon,” Bradley wrote to the judge, adding that Martin was caring for her husband and mother who both have severe health problems.
“And while prison will punish Alice, it will also punish her husband and mother, thus placing a significant burden on these non-defendants.”
Bradley said Martin was at no risk of again committing tax evasion because “her days in the trucking industry are over” and she could be supervised by probation officers to ensure her accounting firm is filing the required tax returns.
Bradley said that Martin’s transfer of her assets to her husband was not hidden from the federal government, took effect in January but her husband didn’t sign the paperwork until August, right before her plea hearing. Her husband was advised that he didn’t need to disclose his assets to the probation officer.
Alice Martin indictment
In May 2024, a federal grand jury indicted Martin for seven felony counts of income tax evasion from 2013 to 2018. The indictment accused Martin of failing to pay tax obligations incurred through her trucking business Martin Logistics from 2011 to 2013.
Around 2013, Martin set up a new trucking business with another name, TSA Transportation, in Florida, the indictment says. She wound down Martin Logistics’ operations through 2015, leading to the IRS writing off the owed tax debt as uncollectible. While Martin’s dispatcher at Martin Logistics was named the owner, Martin controlled TSA’s bank accounts and spending behind the scenes, prosecutors said.
In 2018, an IRS agent, who suspected that Martin’s business was essentially operating under another name to avoid tax obligations, referred the matter to IRS’ Criminal Investigation division. Prosecutors later said that Martin through her “shameful tax evasion scheme” with “an appalling history of willful defiance with federal and state tax laws,” failed to pay $1.17 million in owed income taxes from 2013 to 2018.
Martin Logistics and later TSA had a contract to haul freight from a U.S. Army depot in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, as of 2015. It’s unclear what happened to the contract.
In their sentencing memo to the judge, prosecutors said the IRS and Ohio had filed tax liens against Martin for tax years 1989 to 1992. And that she didn’t file any required tax returns from 2013 to 2024 except she filed a fake tax return in 2017, the memo said. Prosecutors wrote that Martin was routinely delinquent on her tax bills and played “a lifelong cat and mouse game” with the IRS and Ohio Department of Taxation.
The memo accused Martin’s trucking business Martin Logistics of failing to pay $123,600 in owed Social Security, income and unemployment taxes from 2011 to 2017. Martin did pay about $50,000 in owed Social Security taxes on behalf of the business in 2014.
Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Stark County businesswoman gets 30-month prison term for tax evasion
Reporting by Robert Wang, Canton Repository / The Repository
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