A Cody radio mogul was sentenced Tuesday to 15 months in prison for filing a false tax return, the U.S. Department of Justice reports.
Susan K. Patrick formerly lived in Maryland before settling in Cody, Wyoming, where she co-owned Patrick Communications and Legend Communications with her husband. She’s operated more than 20 radio stations in Cody, Worland, Sheridan, Buffalo and Gillette. The couple also has owned television stations in California and Connecticut.
U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III, of Maryland, also ordered Patrick to pay $3,843,922 in restitution to the U.S. government and to complete one year of supervised probation after her 15-month prison term.
Doctored And Unreported Income
Patrick hired an accounting firm to prepare business and personal tax returns for 2012 through 2014. Despite receiving the completed and accurate tax returns from the accounting firm, Patrick did not file them with the IRS, says the DOJ’s statement.
The IRS contacted her and asked her to file the unfiled returns.
Patrick lied to the IRS, saying her accounting firm had filed the returns on time and she would provide copies of them, the statement says.
But instead of providing copies of the returns, she “doctored” them, removing $10 million in gross receipts her brokerage firm had received, and altering the personal returns by removing more than $9.5 million in related income that she and her husband had earned from 2012-2014, according to the statement.
The DOJ said she also “falsely backdated” her signature on each doctored tax return to make them look like they’d been signed on time, and mailed the falsified documents to the IRS, “hoping to evade paying the full amount of taxes she owed.”
She didn’t file timely business and individual returns for 2015 either, despite hiring an accounting firm to prepare those, nor did she pay the tax due on the original return, reportedly.
In total, she sought to evade more than $2.5 million in taxes, the statement says.
‘Sincerely Sorry’
Patrick had pleaded guilty last fall to one count of willfully submitting a false tax return. She could have faced up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines, according to her 2023 plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
She resigned from Patrick Communications after pleading guilty, and said her husband and business partners were never aware of the tax doctoring.
“I am sincerely sorry for the pain and embarrassment that this is causing my family, friends and business associates,” she wrote in a statement at the time.
“I also apologize to the dedicated people at our radio stations across the state of Wyoming who do such a great job every day to serve their communities. Legend Communications is not related to this tax issue in any way.
“This is a tax obligation based on a very serious lapse of judgment a decade ago. I am fully ready to be held accountable and to do whatever I can and need to do to make up for my decisions of the past.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
