Defendant concealed over $1M in gross receipts by using an under-the-table cash payroll

Date: Sept. 18, 2025

Contact: [email protected]

A New Hampshire woman pleaded guilty yesterday to filing a false tax return.

The following is according to court documents and statements made in court: Denise Thibodeau, of Berlin, owned and operated North Country Angels, a home health care business. Most of her clients were elderly individuals who needed frequent in-home health care assistance. To perform the work, Thibodeau hired caregivers and paid them using an under-the-table cash payroll. Specifically, Thibodeau required clients to pay her in checks made payable to cash. Thibodeau cashed the checks, kept a portion of the cash as her own income, and paid the remainder to the caregivers without withholding any Social Security, Medicare, or federal income taxes from the caregivers' wages as required by law. She did this to conceal the wages paid to the caretakers and her own income.

On Thibodeau's individual income tax returns, Thibodeau significantly underreported the income she and her business earned. For 2018-2020, for example, Thibodeau reported on her returns that the business earned a total of $35,000 in gross receipts when it actually earned nearly $1.7 million.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 7, 2026. Thibodeau faces a maximum of three years in prison. She also faces a period of supervised release, restitution, and monetary penalties. A U.S. District Court Judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

IRS Criminal Investigation is investigating the case.

Trial Attorney Ezra Spiro of the Justice Department's Tax Division is prosecuting the case.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.