Oct 27, 2018 3 min read

CARMICHAELS – A Cumberland Township accountant is accused of bilking nearly $50,000 from a client after state police said he withheld wage taxes from the Carmichaels-based company but never forwarded the payments to the government.

Richard Lee Aultman was arraigned on felony theft charges Monday following a lengthy investigation in which state police said he “misfiled the reported wages” for Advanced Masonry Inc. over six financial quarters in 2014 and 2015.

Investigators said Aultman served as Advanced Masonry’s accountant from the company’s inception in mid-2012 until October 2015, when various taxing authorities sent notices showing $20,181.57 in discrepancies between the tax filings and payroll records. The company met with Aultman that month and told him about the issue, and he amended the filings to the state Department of Revenue, police said.

However, the company hired another firm to perform a forensic audit of their accounts, which showed a deficit of $49,020.97 between tax payments and the fees that Aultman charged Advanced Masonry, investigators said.

Aultman submitted a payment of $20,181.57 from his company, Aultman Tax Inc., to the state Department of Revenue. But that still left $28,840.40 in unaccounted money, and Aultman could not explain the discrepancy, police said.

Aultman, 69, of 104 Charles St., faces felony charges of theft by deception and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received. He was arraigned Monday by District Judge Lee Watson and is free on $50,000 unsecured bond before his preliminary hearing scheduled for 11:45 a.m. Wednesday.

The company sued Aultman and his wife, Cynthia, in Greene County Court last October alleging fraud, theft and deceptive business practices. The lawsuit claims Advanced Masonry hired Aultman after the company formed in July 2012 and contracted with him to perform weekly bookkeeping and annual tax preparation.

Tax notices from the Internal Revenue Service began arriving in late 2013 and early 2014, prompting company officials to question Aultman’s handling of their bookkeeping. He blamed the notices on an “error” by the IRS, according to the lawsuit.

The company said it hired an assistant to help Aultman with the bookkeeping in late 2014, but he tried to push back against that decision.

“He expressed that he wanted control of every accounting function or nothing at all,” the lawsuit alleges.

The assistant reportedly noticed problems with tax payments in September 2015. The lawsuit alleges Aultman “had been shifting funds from one quarter to another to conceal” the underpayment of tax withholdings. The company received a dozen notices between January and September 2016 from the IRS and state taxing bodies in West Virginia and Pennsylvania about their intent to seize property and accounts.

The lawsuit claims Cynthia Aultman “routinely assisted” with bookkeeping and performed the tasks when Richard Aultman was unavailable. She has not been charged.

The lawsuit is seeking more than $125,000 to cover the missing funds, along with late fees and other expenses associated with the accounting issues.

Neither Advanced Masonry’s Pittsburgh-based attorney, James Miller, nor Waynesburg attorney Kevin Freyder, who is listed in the lawsuit as representing the Aultmans, could not be reached for comment Friday.