HICKORY, N.C. — A Hickory-area business owner will spend about 30 months in prison after federal prosecutors said he committed tax fraud and made nearly $1 million in unauthorized charges on customers' credit cards.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that 52-year-old James Christopher Robinson of Granite Falls, who pled guilty in January 2024 to access device fraud and failure to truthfully account for and pay over trust fund taxes, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release. He also has to pay more than $4.4 million in restitution.
Robinson owned a group of cabinet manufacturing and retail businesses in the Hickory area. From March 2020 until April 2023, he used customers' credit cards to make about 300 fraudulent charges. He also made at least four counterfeit checks totaling more than $93,000 by using information from customers' real checks. Robinson used the stolen funds to make large cash withdrawals from his business accounts and deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash at casinos.
Prosecutors also said Robinson didn't account for and pay more than $3.1 million in employment taxes from 2017 through 2022.
Robinson is currently released on bond and will be ordered to report to a federal Bureau of Prisons facility to begin his sentence once one has been selected for him.
The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation division investigated the case.