Springfield CPA sentenced to prison for tax evasion

A Springfield certified public accountant on Sept. 7 was sentenced for mail fraud and tax evasion by Judge Ortrie Smith of the Western District of Missouri.

Murphy Hubbard, who pleaded guilty in March to two counts of mail fraud and one count of tax evasion, was sentenced to 42 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution costs of $468,655, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Hubbard's convictions centered around his now-defunct accounting and tax business, the Hubbard Group PC.

Through his business, Hubbard embezzled more than $400,000 from two trusts under his control between 1998-2009. One trust, created by Hazel Beatrice Hirst, of Springfield, designated four local charities as the beneficiaries of her savings. The second trust, established by the heirs of Noel Rummens, of Rogersville, was set up to fund educational expenses for Rummens' surviving heirs and relatives, according to the release.

Rather than using the funding for the intended purposes, Hubbard instead used the majority of the money for himself to pay personal expenses, travel, and purchase items such as automobiles and farm equipment. Little of the money taken from the trusts was reported to the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in a tax loss of about $79,434.

The orders of restitution handed down with the sentence comprise $389,221 to the lawful representatives of the estates of Hirst and the Noel C. Rummens Educational Trust and $79,434 to the IRS.

The case was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation and was prosecuted by Michael Boteler and Mitchell Bober, tax division trial attorneys, and Steven Mohlhenrich, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
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