Barrett Prelogar, Tax Obstruction, Missouri 2019

Kansas City, MO – A former business owner in Kansas City, Missouri, has been sentenced to federal prison for obstructing the government’s effort to collect over $378,000 in taxes owed.

Barrett Prelogar, 48, of Leawood, Kansas, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough to 18 months in federal prison without parole. The court also ordered Prelogar to pay $263,959 in restitution.

Prelogar was found guilty at trial on April 5, 2019, of corruptly endeavoring to impede the due administration of the internal revenue laws. Prelogar engaged in a five-year-long scheme to avoid paying $378,207 in taxes that had been due and owing for almost 15 years.

As a founding partner in now-defunct Winntech Digital Systems, Inc., a Kansas City-based company that primarily produced electronic displays, Prelogar failed to pay over to the government the payroll taxes withheld from Winntech employees’ paychecks in 2002 and 2003. He then obstructed the collection process of the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty, which had been assessed against him personally for the unpaid trust fund taxes of Winntech.

Prelogar also obstructed the IRS’s collection of the income taxes he owed for 2008. On October 28, 2009, Prelogar filed his 2008 tax return, reporting over $500,000 in gross income and a tax due and owing of $120,103. However, he did not submit any payments with the 2008 tax return.

Instead, Prelogar paid a total of over $362,000 towards various personal expenses, including a house at the Lake of the Ozarks, a house near the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, a house in Leawood, Kansas, a Porsche, a Jeep, and a boat, from November 2009 through April 2011. During that time, he made no payments on his 2008 tax debt.

The total tax loss was $378,207, consisting of the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty amounts of $167,237, assessed for the first quarter of 2003, and $96,721 for the second quarter of 2003, as well as the 2008 personal income tax due and owing at the time of the indictment, $114,248.

Prelogar’s case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul S. Becker and Trial Attorney David Zisserson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation.

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