Jonesboro Man Sentenced on Bank Fraud and Failure to Pay Payroll Tax Charges

LITTLE ROCK—Christopher R. Thyer, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas announced today that Scott Keith Voss, 43, of Jonesboro, Arkansas, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller to serve 33 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. Judge Miller also ordered Voss to pay restitution of $450,000 to the First Bank of Owasso and $148,564.94 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Voss, who served as pastor and president of First Pentecostal Church of Jonesboro, pled guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of willful failure to pay over tax on November 9, 2011. Voss admitted during the plea hearing that from September 2007 until June 26, 2010, he devised a scheme to defraud the First Bank of Owasso. As part of the scheme, Voss applied for a loan from the First Bank of Owasso, pledging as collateral the Jonesboro Worship Center real estate. Voss then failed to obtain appropriate board of directors’ authorization to so encumber the church real estate. Voss used the funds to retire previous unauthorized loans for his own personal use, and to obtain additional funds for expenditures not approved by the board of directors of the Jonesboro Worship Center.

Additionally, Voss admitted that from 2006 through 2010, First Pentecostal Church of Jonesboro withheld tax payments from its employees’ paychecks. However, through this same period, the church failed to make any payments to IRS of these withholdings. Voss was the person responsible for the collection and pay over of the church’s payroll taxes. This investigation was conducted by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation.