Former Port bookkeeper to be sentenced in June

Dave Rogers, The Daily News of Newburyport, Mass.
·3 min read

Mar. 29—NEWBURYPORT — A former local bookkeeper who pleaded guilty to stealing money from her clients is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in June, according to her attorney.

Patricia Lindau, 60, who ran Northeast Abacus Inc. on Boardman Street in Newburyport for several years before closing the business and moving to Newburgh, Maine, pleaded guilty last month to a count of wire fraud and a count of tax evasion.

During a status hearing Friday in Newburypport District Court, where a case against her remains open, attorney Carmine Lepore told Judge Peter Doyle that his client is looking at a sentence of 5 to 6 1/2 years in prison.

In a plea agreement filed in late January in federal court, the government recommended a prison sentence at the low end of the guidelines sentencing range — which can range up to 20 years — along with one year of supervised release and restitution of $1,393,430.

Once Lindau is sentenced in federal court, the case against her in Newburyport District Court will be dropped.

Federal authorities said Lindau "engaged in a scheme to defraud many of her clients by failing to pay over to the Internal Revenue Service and Massachusetts Department of Revenue the payroll taxes that she withdrew from her clients' bank accounts" between 2017 and spring 2020.

Lindau then sent each client a weekly report falsely indicating that the money had been paid to the IRS and state DOR.

When Lindau's clients received letters from the IRS and DOR indicating their payroll taxes had not been paid, Lindau lied to the clients, telling them the IRS or DOR letters were a mistake and that she would take care of it, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling's office said. In some instances, she then paid the taxes late.

Lindau's scheme continued into the first quarter of 2020 when most of her clients closed their businesses due to the pandemic, and then discovered their employees' payroll taxes had not been and were not being paid.

Over the course of the scheme, Lindau failed to pay over when due more than $2 million and caused a net loss to her clients of more than $1.1 million.

The case began when the Essex District Attorney's Office received complaints from two former clients of Northeast Abacus and launched an investigation. The complaints alleged that Lindau stole an estimated $60,300 from two small businesses in Danvers and Haverhill when she failed to pay their state taxes.

Lindau and her website disappeared in May 2020, leaving her clients owing back taxes to the state and the IRS, according to several business owners interviewed by The Daily News.

Lindau and her husband, Kjell Morgan Lindau, listed $1.3 million in debt to their 20 biggest creditors when they filed for bankruptcy in Maine on June 20. Just how much their clients owe is unknown, but Lindau is estimated to owe between $1 million and $10 million to all of her roughly 60 creditors, according to court documents.

Lindau and her husband listed 27-29 Boardman St. as their company's principal address in court documents that also indicate 29 Boardman St. was sold in 2014.

The Gloucester Times contributed to this report.

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