Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

Re: Payroll Fraud?

The company should be informed of this apparent fraud with your request that you be issued a revised

W-2 form showing what you actually earned in tax year 2008 while employed with this company.

Re: Payroll Fraud?

This is absolutely NOT legal. And precisely for the reason that you identify.

By issuing checks to you that you didn't receive it inflates your reportable income for taxes.

I don't know why he would do this if he owns the company. If he were siphoning off money from the company that somebody else owns, it would also be cheating them. But if he is taking money from his own company, I don't understand it.

Frankly, I am not sure how to unravel it. Make sure you understand that reporting him might be the right thing to do but it WILL NOT BENEFIT YOU. Do not confuse turning him in as as having anything to do with fixing YOUR problem. They are not the same thing at all.

Before you do anything, you should figure your taxes both with and without these extra payroll payments. If he was running these payments through a payroll company, then more than likely they also withheld taxes from the payroll. So you mihgt not owe any extra taxes, if they also withheld taxesto match.

You need to know if you have actually lost something and if so how much have you actually lost?

I think you should definitely confront him, perhaps privately at first. (Perhaps by phone.)

Who knows? Maybe he screwed up with the direct deposit information. Maybe the payroll company screwed up.

It would be FAR easier for them to voluntarily clean it up than trying to do it through legal aciton.