Columbia man pleads guilty to fraud, failing to pay taxes

A tax preparer from Columbia has pleaded guilty to defrauding clients and failing to pay his own income taxes, which totaled almost $300,000.

David Keithley, 63, was charged with filing a false income tax return and failing to file an income tax return. He entered a guilty plea to the charges on August 2.

Keithley owned Keithley and Associates in Columbia, a tax preparation and payroll tax service. Clients would hire Keithley to prepare returns and make tax deposits to the government. But Keithley admitted to not making those deposits, instead using the money for his own benefit.

The total amount of money he used, according to investigators, was just over $120,000. When people called him to say they’d been told by the IRS their returns had not been filed or taxes paid, he said he would contact the IRS and fix the problem.

Keithley also admitted to willfully failing to file federal income tax returns from 2009 to 2013. For those years, he owed nearly $150,000 to the IRS, and more than $22,000 to the State of Missouri.

Keithley’s sentencing has not been scheduled; he faces up to four years in federal prison without parole.