Date: March 13, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Columbus, OH — A Union County man was sentenced in U.S. District Court today to 46 months in prison for a $1.4 million fraud scheme involving state agency contracts.
Nicholas Price of Marysville, defrauded three electronic equipment supplier businesses. The related state customers included the Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
As part of his sentence, Price will pay more than $1.4 million in restitution.
According to court documents, Price owned Right PriceIT, LLC, an information-technology business registered in Ohio. He accepted money in return for supplying electronic equipment to companies that were awarded state contracts. The state would pay the contracting company, and the contracting company would pay Price, who would broker lower-cost suppliers; however, Price never paid the suppliers.
For example, in 2019, Price made an agreement with a company that won contracts to provide electronic equipment to the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. According to the agreement, the company would pay Price funds for the equipment and a profit for Price, who would then purchase the equipment from a supplier to provide to the state. Price never paid the supplier the cost of the equipment, nearly $689,000, despite the state agencies and companies all holding up their ends of the agreement.
Likewise, Price engaged in a similar scheme with a business that won a contract to provide electronic equipment to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Again, Price entered into an agreement with the contracting company and a supplier to purchase the equipment and provide it to the state. The state and contracting company provided Price with more than $685,000, and the supplier provided the equipment, but Price never paid the supplier for the equipment.
In total, Price engaged in a similar fraud three times, causing a loss of more than $1.4 million.
Price then laundered the proceeds of his fraud scheme and sent wires to people who own car dealerships with the expectation that the funds would be laundered through those businesses.
Throughout his pending federal fraud case, Price obstructed justice and violated the terms of his pretrial release.
On the day of his detention hearing, Price instructed an individual to delete Price’s iCloud account.
While out on bond, Price violated the terms of his release by using methamphetamine, cocaine and alcohol. Price was also caught by law enforcement on more than one occasion driving luxury vehicles faster than 100 miles per hour. In one instance, Price drove a Ferrari F8 Spider in a densely populated area near Emerald Parkway and Sawmill Road in Dublin and crashed into two vehicles at an intersection. The driver of one of the other cars suffered serious injuries and had to be removed from his car with the jaws of life. Price’s bond was revoked after the crash, and he has been detained since.
Price was arrested on federal fraud charges in March 2024. He pleaded guilty in October 2024 to wire fraud and monetary transaction money laundering.
Kelly A. Norris, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; and Karen Wingerd, Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) announced the sentence imposed today by U.S. District Court Judge Edmund A. Sargus, Jr. Assistant United States Attorney Peter K. Glenn-Applegate is representing the United States in this case.
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.