Innis Frederick, a former payroll manager for Equinox Home Care LLC, a home health care company based in Stratford, was indicted by a grand jury in Hartford on a federal tax fraud charge.
Frederick, of Saint Cloud, Florida, appeared Sept. 3 via videoconference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert M. Spector and pleaded not guilty. He was released on a $20,000 bond, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut.
Equinox Home Care was a partnership between Frederick”™s sister, Theresa Foreman, and another individual who was not identified in the indictment. According to the charges brought against Frederick, the partnership ended in September 2012 and Foreman was ordered by the court to make payments to her partner for the purchase of the partner”™s interest in the company.
However, between 2012 and 2016, Frederick assisted Foreman by fraudulently adjusting the payroll process to enable checks to be issued to “ghost employees” who never worked for Equinox Home Care. Instead, the money went to Foreman, who did not report the hundreds of thousands of dollars of income on her tax returns. By submitting false payroll data, Frederick also caused false Forms W-2 and W-3 to be submitted to the Internal Revenue Service.
Frederick was previously charged with conspiracy to defraud the government and impede and impair the IRS, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years.
Foreman pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and was sentenced in January to 12 months and one day of imprisonment and ordered to pay $641,941.46 in restitution.
