Date: March 13, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Albany, GA — The former long-time Worth County, Georgia, Tax Commissioner has admitted to not reporting earnings from work she did for four cities on her tax return. Tabetha DuPriest of Poulan, Georgia, pleaded guilty to one count of making and subscribing a false tax return before U.S. District Judge Leslie Gardner today. The maximum sentence is three years in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release, a $100,000 fine and restitution. A sentencing date will be determined by the Court. The defendant is not eligible for parole. “There is no excuse for a long-time Tax Commissioner to fail to report earnings on personal income taxes, just like other citizens must do,” said U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary. “These kinds of schemes undermine the public’s trust and simply won’t be tolerated by our office or our law enforcement partners.” “Tax evasion undermines the integrity of our tax system and harms honest taxpayers,” said Rich Bilson, Senior Supervisory Resident Agent of FBI Atlanta’s Albany office. “The FBI remains committed to upholding tax compliance and pursuing those who attempt to evade their tax responsibilities.” “As a tax commissioner, Tabetha DuPriest breached the public trust by willfully failing to report all of her income as required by law,” said Demetrius Hardeman, Acting Special Agent in Charge, IRS Criminal Investigation (CI), Atlanta Field Office. “IRS special agents are committed to ensuring everyone pays their fair share of taxes to protect the integrity of the tax system.” According to court documents, DuPriest was the Worth County Tax Commissioner since 2001; she also served as the President of the Georgia Association of Tax Officials from 2019-2021. In her role as Tax Commissioner, DuPriest oversaw the collection of motor vehicle taxes and property taxes for the Worth County cities of Sylvester, Poulan, Warwick and Sumner. For that work, she earned approximately $80,000 in wages a year and received a Form W-2 from the Worth County Board of Commissioners. In addition to her salary, each of these municipalities separately contracted with DuPriest to collect city taxes, and she was paid separately by each city for that work. An FBI and IRS investigation revealed that DuPriest failed to declare any of the additional income she had received from her independent contracts with the four municipalities in Worth County on her federal tax returns since she became Tax Commissioner. It was not until after she was interviewed by the FBI in 2022 that she began to declare the additional income. During the first FBI interview, DuPriest initially claimed she reported the additional income on her tax returns, however, during a subsequent interview she admitted she did not. DuPriest knew she was required to report these fees as self-employment income on her yearly tax returns. DuPriest received $99,293.65 from the four cities between 2016 and 2021 and did not report it as income, as required, on her tax returns. DuPriest is responsible for causing at least a $27,924.22 tax loss to the IRS and required to pay $22,482.22 in restitution. This case was investigated by the IRS CI and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Redavid is prosecuting the case for the Government. 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.
