Pawn shop owner from Las Vegas pleads guilty to tax evasion
A pawn shop owner from Las Vegas pleaded guilty Monday to tax evasion in federal court after she was accused of concealing revenue from gold jewelry sold to her stores.
Barbara Doutt Forbes, 58, lives in Las Vegas and owned six pawn shops in North and South Dakota between 1997 and 2017, according to court documents. Starting in 2009, Forbes told employees to remove gold jewelry from the stores’ inventory systems and ship it to her in Las Vegas.
She earned more than $850,000 from selling the jewelry to a refining company in Philadelphia but did not report the income on her tax returns, prosecutors said.
Forbes pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and agreed to pay more than $280,000 in back taxes to the IRS, the Department of Justice said.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey will sentence Forbes on May 11.
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