Last March, federal agents served a warrant on Nastar Roofing Enterprises Inc., a predominantly residential roofing firm about 10 miles southwest of Fort Myers in Cape Coral, Fla., blocking the business’s entrance and spending hours retrieving bags of what appeared to be documents.

When officers from the IRS’s Criminal Investigation, the law enforcement agency responsible for investigating potential criminal violations, raided the office on Del Prado Boulevard, investigators would not elaborate on what was happening.

Several months after that raid, the U.S. Department of Justice cleared up the confusion by releasing a statement on Nov. 8 stating that the firm’s owner and a payroll administrator had each pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States by not paying employment taxes to the IRS.

William Skaggs, Jr., the owner of Nastar Roofing, and Billie Adkison, the company’s office administrator, admitted to paying employees primarily in cash to avoid paying federal employment taxes.

In a news release, the Justice Department said that between 2013 and 2023, Nastar employees, withdrew over $21 million from company bank accounts to pay employees without withholding Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. The DOJ says the pair did this to escape paying employment taxes they knew were legally required, including FICA taxes.

The DOJ stated that Nastar occasionally used a payroll provider for employee paychecks without reporting cash wages. Consequently, the payroll company filed false employment tax returns with the IRS. 

When Nastar filed its own tax returns, it also failed to report significant cash wages. Both Skaggs and Adkison signed these false returns knowingly, causing the IRS a tax loss of nearly $2.5 million.

In a separate statement on the same day, United States Attorney Roger B. Handberg, who heads the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, announced that Skaggs and Adkison pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. Each faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

As part of their plea deal, Skaggs and Adkison have agreed to pay full restitution to the government, including an upfront payment of $1 million. Each faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

Their sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.