Date: March 6, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Tampa, FL — Acting United States Attorney Sara C. Sweeney announces that Terry Brunning was arrested and charged with evasion of the payment of taxes and four counts of filing false income tax returns. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for the evasion count, and up to three years’ imprisonment for each count of filing of a false tax return.
According to the indictment, between 2005 and December 2019, Brunning evaded the payment of taxes due and owed by him for income he earned and failed to report and pay taxes on between 1998 and 2001. During the period between 2005 and 2018, aware of the tax assessment by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against him for more than $2 million in taxes, penalties, and interest, Brunning continued to earn income from a new business. He used that income to pay for personal expenses and personal assets which he tried to conceal from the IRS. He also failed to make any substantial payment to the IRS for his earlier tax debt and failed to file income tax returns between 2007 and 2018.
After IRS that (IRS-CI) agents sought to interview Brunning in October 2018 in connection with their investigation, Brunning resumed the filing of income tax returns for a number of years, including tax years 2015 through 2018. The income tax returns which he filed for those years contained false reports related to the amounts of income that he had earned in each of those years, resulting in the underreporting of more than $490,000 in income for those four years.
An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed one or more violations of federal criminal law, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless, and until, proven guilty.
This case was investigated by the IRS-CI, Tampa Field Office. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jay L. Hoffer.
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.