Sarasota Restaurant Owner Defrauded IRS: U.S. Department of Justice

SARASOTA, FL — A Sarasota woman pleaded guilty to defrauding the Internal Revenue Service, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Madeline Nikolson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to impede and impair the ability of the IRS to ascertain and collect personal and corporate income tax revenue.

She faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison, the DOJ said. Her sentencing date hasn't been set.

Nikolson, who co-owned and managed a Sarasota restaurant, and her partner began removing daily cash sales from the point-of-sales registers at the restaurant in August 2013, the agency said. They left the record to include only the credit card sales.

The owners used this falsified record of sales income to submit to tax preparers who prepared both their personal income tax returns and their corporate tax returns in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

As a result, they falsified and removed any reference to approximately $726,105 in sales income from their corporate and personal tax returns for those tax years, resulting in over $100,000 of taxes due and owing on those sums of unreported income, the DOJ said,