Bookkeeper charged with cheating clients out of over $1M

BOSTON (AP) » The owner of a company that provided payroll and payroll tax services to many small businesses in New England has agreed to plead guilty to embezzling more than $1 million from her clients, many of them already struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Patricia Lindau, 65, of Newburgh, Maine, will plead guilty at a date to be determined to wire fraud and tax evasion, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts.

Lindau, owner of Northeast Abacus Inc., from 2017 and the spring of 2020, failed to pay payroll taxes that she withdrew from her clients’ bank accounts to the Internal Revenue Service and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, prosecutors said.

She instead transferred those funds into her company’s checking account for her personal use.