C-Falls woman gets 21 months for tax evasion

A 58-year-old Columbia Falls woman was sentenced in federal court in Missoula to 21 months in prison after she pleaded guilty on Jan. 4 to two counts of attempting to evade or defeat tax.

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy on April 20 also ordered Leslie McIntosh to pay $159,464 in restitution and complete three years of supervised release.

According to U.S. Attorney for Montana Michael Cotter, McIntosh was charged with under reporting her taxable income by $131,509 for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. A total of $28,849 was owed to the Internal Revenue Service, not including $6,710 in interest.

McIntosh was an accountant by training and was a certified public accountant from 1991 through 2006. Her CPA license was revoked in December 2006 after she was convicted of a federal felony.

In January 2006, McIntosh took a job with FITEC, LLC, a collection agency in Kalispell, as their chief financial officer. She started out at $45,000 a year, but her salary was later increased to $60,000.

According to Cotter, FITEC’s owners discovered irregularities in the company’s financial reports in spring 2008 and ordered an audit. The audit revealed a total of $131,511 from FITEC and its related companies had been deposited in the personal accounts of McIntosh and another person.

That other person allegedly told the authorities that McIntosh had told him the money needed to be deposited in his account in order to conceal it from the IRS. McIntosh did not include any of the $131,511 on her income tax returns for the years 2006-2008.

Based on the charges, McIntosh initially faced up to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine.