The federal case against La Mota CEO Rosa Cazares turns on a contested question: who was responsible for directing the money used to pay the companies’ payroll taxes? A grand jury indictment handed up Oct. 15 alleges that Cazares willfully failed to collect, account for or pay over federal employment taxes for La Mota and 503 Staffing. She pleaded not guilty to eight counts at a hearing in Portland on Thursday, Nov. 5, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Prosecutors allege that more than $1 million in taxes went unpaid on a quarterly basis from March 2020 through December 2021, while the total amount at issue, including penalties, exceeds $1.5 million, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. The indictment identifies Cazares as CEO of La Mota and 503 Staffing, which processed payroll for the cannabis business, and alleges that she oversaw both companies’ financial affairs.
Control and payment are disputed
Cazares’s lawyer, Ronald Hoevet, disputes that account. He says she was not an owner of either company, had no duty to pay the taxes and lacked authority to decide how company money was spent. Hoevet also says 503 Staffing paid the taxes in February 2023. Those are defense claims, not findings by the court, and the payment claim does not resolve the indictment’s allegations about the earlier period, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Hoevet has pointed to Aaron Mitchell, whom he described as La Mota’s founder and owner and the father of Cazares’s child. Mitchell is not named in the federal indictment and attended the hearing in support of Cazares, the newspaper reported. The case does not establish from the allegations alone who ultimately controlled the relevant payments.
Cazares remains free pending trial. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that prosecutors agreed to her release subject to a standard form barring harassment of potential witnesses; a separate proposed restriction on contacting certain witnesses was not pursued. Her trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5, 2027, before U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut and is expected to last six days.
What the tax allegations mean—and what comparisons cannot show
Employment taxes withheld from workers’ wages are commonly called “trust fund taxes,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Tax Manual. That general label describes the tax category; it does not determine who had responsibility for payment in Cazares’s case, which remains disputed.
A separate Florida prosecution illustrates the kind of conduct federal authorities may pursue, but it is not evidence about La Mota. The IRS reported that payroll-services-company owner Matthew Brown was sentenced in April 2025 to 50 months in prison after failing to pay over more than $20 million in employment taxes withheld from workers’ wages. Brown’s case involved Elite Payroll and businesses he controlled, unlike the unresolved allegations against Cazares.
The scale of national tax noncompliance also provides only broad context. The IRS projected that employment taxes accounted for $127 billion of the gross federal tax gap for tax year 2022. That estimate is not a count of criminal cases and says nothing about the allegations in Portland.
A history of tax liens around the companies
The case follows years of reported tax liens involving 503 Staffing and business ventures associated with Cazares and Mitchell. Willamette Week reported that federal authorities filed four liens against 503 Staffing in 2022 totaling more than $4 million, and that Cazares, Mitchell and companies they controlled had incurred at least $7 million in federal and state liens since 2019. Those records add financial context but do not establish who was responsible for the payroll-tax payments charged in the indictment.
Statewide cannabis data likewise should not be mistaken for evidence about this case. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission reported that its marijuana compliance group processed 3,731 cases in 2023; 2,357 were closed with no action and 204 were referred to administrative hearings. The figures concern statewide regulatory work, not Cazares or the federal tax allegations.
Cazares has pleaded not guilty. The indictment’s claims have not been proven, and the defense maintains the taxes were paid in 2023 and that Cazares lacked authority over company finances.
