IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Presents: Tax Case of the Month

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January Tax Case of the Month

Former home health CEO sentenced for embezzlement and tax evasion

Belinda Jo Juarez, former CEO and majority owner of Superior Home Health Service, has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for embezzling employee health insurance premiums and tax evasion.

Juarez’s company, based in San Antonio with additional locations, offered employees the option to enroll in a health insurance plan. However, beginning in August 2017, she stopped making payments to insurance providers while continuing to withhold premium contributions from employee paychecks. Employees were not informed that their coverage had been canceled, leaving some with unexpected medical debts.

As part of her sentence, Juarez must pay $617,738 in restitution to former employees for withheld premiums and unpaid medical costs.

She was also convicted of failing to pay federal payroll taxes between 2016 and 2019. Although she withheld payroll taxes from employee wages, she did not remit the funds to the IRS, contributing to more than $1million in personal income tax liability.

In total, Juarez must pay $3,667,098 in restitution to the IRS. In addition to her prison sentence, she was fined $20,000 and will serve three years of supervised release.

Each month, IRS-CI leadership selects one criminal case adjudicated during the previous month to serve as the Tax Case of the Month. This month’s case was investigated by IRS-CI’s Houston Field Office.

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IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.