Owner of Aurora business gets year of federal prison time for tax fraud

A judge has sentenced Shandel Arkadie to a year and a day in federal prison and ordered her to repay more than $1.2 million in restitution for failing to forward payroll taxes that she had collected from her employees, according to a release from the Denver Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service.

Arkadie owned and operated a home health care company in Aurora called Alternative Choice Home Care Nursing LLC. She was responsible for withholding the payroll taxes her employees owed the federal government, as well as her company’s portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes, and then forwarding the money to the IRS each quarter.

Between January 2015 and December 2020,  Arkadie took more than $1 million from the paychecks of her workers, but then didn’t forward the money on as required by law, the IRS said. She also failed to pay $500,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes that she owed the government as the employer.

“Shandel Arkadie is spending the next 12 months in jail and will be paying back the federal government for much longer than that,” said Amanda Prestegard, special agent in charge at the IRS Denver Field Office. “Her actions were motivated by greed with a complete disregard for her employees.”

Employment tax investigations are a high priority for the IRS because they not only cheat the federal government but also harm workers who think payroll withholdings are going to cover their obligations. Failure to pay those taxes can result in workers receiving reduced Medicare, Social Security and unemployment benefits in the future.

The two most common ways employers try to cheat the system are by preparing false payroll tax returns or failing to file employment tax returns, according to the IRS.

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