Michael Boyce, 57, formerly of Middletown, was sentenced Thursday to 60 months of imprisonment on federal wire fraud and tax evasion charges involving more than $3 million in billings for computer equipment.
According to documents and arguments discussed in open court, beginning in or around 2004, Boyce began defrauding his employer by submitting fake invoices for computer equipment and supplies that were never used at the company.
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Former Middletown resident charged in connection with $6.5 million invoicing scheme
Boyce was able to submit these invoices because he worked in his employer’s information technology department. After submitting the invoices through third-party vendors, Boyce recorded the equipment as received by the company and forwarding the paperwork to the Accounts Payable Department.
Upon receiving payment from the company, the third party vendors would transfer 90 percent of that payment to Boyce. Over the course of the 12 years that Boyce’s scheme operated, he took more than $3.2 million from his employer, all the while rising through the ranks of the IT Department and eventually becoming its director.
The amount had originally been estimated at more than $6 million.
Though he declared much of his illegal income, Boyce evaded the payment of income taxes on more than $1 million between 2012 and 2015. Mr. Boyce pled guilty late last year, a release stated.
U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss stated, “Today was a day of reckoning for a defendant who, over the course of a dozen years, stole millions of dollars from his employer to line his own pockets. His calculated and callous conduct not only hurt the company’s bottom line, but abused the trust of his co-workers and the supervisors who promoted him, all the time unaware of the theft. While the Defendant successfully concealed his crimes for years, today they caught up with him. The five-year sentence handed down by the Court should send a message to others contemplating similar crimes that in the end, crime does not pay. ”
The case was investigated by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf. U.S. Attorney Weiss thanked the investigators for their diligence and dedication in pursuing this investigation.
