Date: May 21, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
Acting United States Attorney April M. Leon announced that U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson sentenced Leslie Henry Wilson, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to 12 months in federal prison following her conviction for failure to pay federal taxes. The Court further sentenced Wilson to serve three years of supervised release following her term of imprisonment and ordered her to pay $598,774.51 in restitution.
From January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2023, Wilson was the sole owner of Personal Touch Healthcare Services, LLC, which provides outpatient assisted living services, and Personal Touch Respite Center, LLC, which provides temporary housing for homeless people with special needs. Each of these businesses employed workers and operated in and around the Baton Rouge metropolitan area. Wilson managed and oversaw all aspects of these two companies, including payroll and taxes.
During that time, Wilson failed to pay over $598,774.51 to the IRS on behalf of her businesses and employees. Specifically, she withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars in payroll (i.e., FICA) taxes from her employees but kept the money for herself instead of paying it to the IRS. Further, she also failed to pay the employer portion of the FICA taxes for her employees. FICA payroll taxes are used to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for all Americans.
This matter was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ben Wallace.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.