Date: July 31, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A Texas woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by a three-year term of supervised release for a scheme to embezzle at least $29 million from her employer – a charitable foundation and several other companies run by a Dallas family. She was also ordered to pay $44,809,438 in restitution to her victims. According to court documents, Barbara Chalmers of Lewisville, admitted that starting in at least 2012, she abused her position as bookkeeper for the family’s companies and her signatory authority over the companies’ bank accounts to fraudulently write herself at least 175 checks, which she deposited into her personal accounts. To conceal her fraudulent conduct, she provided false paperwork to tax preparers misstating the year-end cash-on-hand numbers for the various accounts from which she was embezzling. She used more than $25 million of the stolen money to fund a construction business for which she was the president. She also used $6 million to pay off credit card debt. It was recommended for Chalmers to participate in the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program while incarcerated as part of her rehabilitation. The IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) and FBI investigated the case. Trial Attorneys Vasanth Sridharan and Lucy Jennings of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas prosecuted the case. 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. 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.
