Jefferson County business owner accused of tax fraud

SYRACUSE, New York (WWNY) – The 67-year-old co-owner of a Jefferson County business is accused of tax fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Barbara DeYear of the town of Lorraine is the co-owner and president of Independent Commercial Contractors, Inc., a corporation that does construction, demolition, and asbestos removal work.

She allegedly withheld more than $135,000 in employment taxes from her workers’ paychecks between 2019 and 2022 and failed to pay those withholdings to the IRS as required by law.

DeYear is also accused of failing to file quarterly tax returns on behalf of Independent Commercial Contractors from 2015 through 2022 but that during the COVID-19 pandemic, she applied for a federally backed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and submitted a fraudulent “file copy” of two tax returns purporting to show tax payments on behalf of the corporation, when neither the tax returns nor the payments were sent to the IRS.

She faces 13 felony counts of tax fraud.

If convicted, DeYear faces up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 per count.

She was arraigned Tuesday and released.

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