Date: May 23, 2024

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Martinsburg, WV —The owners of three Inwood, West Virginia businesses have admitted to failing to pay $300,000 in income taxes.

Mark L. Peters and Aimee Michelle Peters, the owners and operators of Pizza Oven; Dragonfly Health, LLC; and Allied Light and Sound, pled guilty to conspiracy to obstruct or impede the Internal Revenue Service. According to court documents, Mark and Aimee Peters failed to declare nearly $1.3 million in income to the IRS for four years.

Mark and Aimee Peters each face up to five years in federal prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

As a part of their plea agreements, the defendants agreed to pay $672.286.59, which includes the tax loss, penalties, and interest.

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (CI).

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eleanor Hurney is prosecuting the case on behalf of the government.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Trumble presided.

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.