Date: Feb. 21, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Ocala, FL — Acting United States Attorney Sara C. Sweeney announces that Dorian Farmer has pleaded guilty to one count of failure to pay employment trust fund taxes and two counts of willfully failing to file tax returns. Farmer faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison for the employment trust fund offense and up to one year of imprisonment for each willful failure to file tax return offenses. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
According to court documents, Farmer was the owner of several businesses in Howey-in-the-Hills in Lake County. For years, Farmer collected employment trust fund taxes from his employees—such as those that pay for Social Security or Medicare. Rather than turning these taxes over to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Farmer embezzled the funds for his own use. He took large cash distributions from one of his businesses which went unreported to the IRS. Farmer also failed to file tax returns for himself and one of his businesses, Titleist Technologies, Inc. (d/b/a Summit Joint Performance) for tax year 2000, as required under federal law. Farmer’s criminal acts resulted in a total tax loss of $806,653.
This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney William S. Hamilton.
IRS-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. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.