James Christopher Robinson, a 52-year-old business owner from Granite Falls, North Carolina, has been sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for engaging in tax and credit card fraud. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina, Robinson will also face two years of supervised release and has been ordered to pay a restitution sum of approximately $4.4 million.
The investigation, spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Secret Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), revealed fraudulent activities perpetrated by Robinson across his businesses in the Hickory area. According the court records, the business owner made 294 unauthorized credit card charges and crafted counterfeit checks to siphon off over $1 million from his customers between March 2020 and April 2023.
Robinson's financial misconduct extended beyond credit card fraud, impacting federal tax obligations. Court documents indicated that his failure to account for and timely pay over $3.1 million in employment taxes for two of his companies spanned several years, from 2017 to 2022. It was uncovered that the stolen funds were often used for large cash withdrawals and deposits, with a significant amount funneled into casino activities.
On January 17, 2024, Robinson entered a guilty plea to charges of access device fraud and failure to truthfully account for and pay over trust fund taxes. He was subsequently released on bond and is to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin his sentence upon designation of an appropriate facility. U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell, underscoring the gravity of the crimes committed, remarked that Robinson's offenses were "serious," emphasizing the presence of "a lot of deliberate, fraudulent, selfish conduct."
U.S. Attorney Dena J. King, in announcing the sentence, extended thanks to the collaborating federal agencies for their diligent efforts in investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Caryn Finley of the Charlotte office was recognized for her role in prosecuting the fraud case.
