Platte County daycare owner admits to not paying nearly $1 million in taxes

The former owner of two daycare businesses — one in Parkville, Mo. and the other in Platte City — pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this week to failing to pay $891,572 in payroll and other taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

Lynn Jordan, 47, of Parkville, Mo., waived her right to a grand jury and pleaded guilty Monday, Feb. 22 before U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs. She operated Growing Places, Inc., in Parkville, which opened in 1999 and closed in 2011. Jordan later opened South Platte Early Educational Center, LLC, using the same business location, clients, assets, employees, etc. before closing that business in 2012.

Growing Places Platte City, Inc., opened in 2006 and closed in 2009, after which Jordan opened GPPC, Inc., using the same business location, clients, assets and employees, but with a different employer identification number. She did this because she was having problems paying business expenses, owed a lot of money to the IRS and needed a fresh start.

Jordan closed this business in 2010.

By pleading guilty, Jordan admitted the total federal criminal tax loss is $891,572. From 2009 to 2012, Jordan withheld employment taxes from her employees’ paychecks totaling $211,704 but failed to pay over the trust fund taxes she collected from her employees to the IRS.

Jordan also failed to pay over the employer’s portion of Social Security tax and Medicare tax from 2009 to 2012, totaling $123,906. Additionally, she didn’t pay over employment taxes from 2004 to 2008 totaling $506,588 and failed to pay over federal unemployment taxes from 2004 to 2012 totaling $22,294.

In addition to the payroll taxes, Jordan failed to file tax returns for three years from 2009 to 2012. The balance due on those tax returns totals $27,079.

During this time, Jordan spent a total of $320,738 on a large number of personal expenses from the business bank accounts.

According to the plea agreement, Jordan withdrew more than $150,000 in cash and paid more than $50,000 on the mortgage of her personal residence from the business bank accounts. She made large ATM withdrawals and personal charges, including for lunches, salons, manicures, pedicures, travel, credit card and loan payments, checks and transfers to her personal bank accounts (in addition to her paychecks), retail stores, vehicle expenses, gas station purchases, clothing stores, medical and health expenses, restaurants, travel, expenses related to her children and credit score companies.

Under federal statutes, Jordan is subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole.

The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the United States Probation Office.