CHARLOTTE, NC — A former Charlotte-area minister has been sentenced to 60 months in prison for tax fraud and failure to pay taxes.
51-year-old Todd Coontz, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was also ordered to pay more than $750,000 in restitution, says Andrew Murray, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.
A grand jury indicted Coontz on Thursday, June 22, 2017 for multiple tax related crimes. He was charged with three counts of Failure to Pay Taxes and four counts of Aiding and Assisting in the Filing of False Tax Returns.
Click the link to read the full indictment: Coontz Indictment
Officials say Coontz was the minister of Rock Wealth International Ministries (Rockwealth Ministries) and authored several books on faith and finances between 2010 and 2014. Coontz also ran two for-profit companies, Legacy Media and Coontz Investments and Insurance.
According to the indictment, Coontz allegedly filed delinquent 1040 US Federal Income Tax Returns with the IRS and consistently failed to make timely payments on taxes owed between the 2000 and 2014 tax years. The indictment also says that Coontz allegedly filed false federal income tax returns during the 2010 and 2013 tax years, and engaged in a check cashing scheme that involved payments for travel reimbursements for speaking engagements and the sale of books and other products.
From 2010-2013 Coontz allegedly spent large amounts of business funds to pay for personal expenditures and classified them as “business expenses.” Coontz also allegedly claimed numerous assets like homes and luxury vehicles as business expenses by holding them under his companies’ names rather than his own.
During that time, Coontz allegedly spent more than $225,000 on clothes, over $140,000 on meals and entertainment, and bought three BMWs, two Ferraris, a Maserati, a Land Rover, a Regal 2500 boat, and a $1.5 million condominium to use as a parsonage.
If convicted on all counts, officials said Coontz could have faced up to 19 years in prison and a roughly $1.3 million fine.
