Accountant sentenced for stealing tax payments

ANCHORAGE — Over the course of 16 years, two criminal cases and multiple businesses, the total of what Frances Yvonne Rowland was convicted of stealing stands around $1.3 million.

According to a sentence announced Tuesday, she’ll serve six years and three months in a federal prison while paying a $25,000 fine for her most recent conviction.

Rowland, who also went by Yvonne Rowland, Frances Yvonne Carter and Frances Leary, most recently worked as a tax preparer, owning and operating businesses in Anchorage and Wasilla. The businesses included Carter and Associates LLC, Carter Organization LLC, Carter Financial Group LLC, Carter Tax Inc., and most recently A-Plus Tax and Accounting Services.

Rowland prepared taxes for individuals and small businesses. If clients owed taxes, she would have them write her a check, then deposit the money in her own account with the promise she would use it to pay the IRS.

“In all, Rowland persuaded at least nine separate clients to transfer over $700,000 to accounts that she controlled,” according to a press release announcing her sentence.

That money accrued over three years, from 2005 to 2008. Very little of it actually went to pay the government. Some went to business expenses, some to personal expenses like her home mortgage or travel costs. She also drew from the accounts to pay other clients’ tax bills.

Still more of the money, in a bizarre twist, actually went to pay restitution for the $200,000 she was convicted of stealing from Carlile Transportation Systems in a 1996 conviction for which she served a subsequent four-year prison term.

While this was going on, she took out credit cards in her father-in-law’s name, racking up $400,000 in debt.

Prosecutors had sought 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to court documents.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Bradley argued in asking for that stiffer sentence that Rowland seemed undeterred by the charges she faced.

“In conversations with victims during the scheme and to clients and staff after the indictment, the defendant attempted to blame her own actions on mistakes by ‘disgruntled employees,’” the prosecutor wrote. “As recently as a few weeks ago, after pleading guilty and knowing that she was about to be sentenced to federal prison, the defendant sent out an email to her clients. ... In telling her clients that she would not be actively involved in her businesses for the foreseeable future, the defendant did not admit that she had pled guilty to federal felonies and thus was facing prison time. Instead, she fashioned a statement that made it sound like her less active role was a result of her need to spend more time with her family.”

According to the press release announcing her sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Burgess said he was worried Rowland hadn’t learned her lesson. The Carlile case, he said, should have been a wake-up call, but apparently was not.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.