Date: May 27, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
Muskogee, OK — The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Brad William Ritter and Toby Le Mills, both of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, were sentenced for Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud. Ritter was sentenced to 41 months of incarceration. Mills was sentenced to 33 months of incarceration. As part of sentencing, the Court ordered the defendants to pay $3,797,500.00 in restitution. In addition, the Court entered a money judgment against Mills in the amount of $1,059,958.00, ordered forfeiture of $697,863.67 in funds seized from Ritter, and entered a forfeiture money judgment against Ritter in the amount of $2,029,678.33.
The charges arose from an investigation by IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Ritter and Mills each pleaded guilty to one count of Conspiracy to Commit Wire fraud on April 3, 2024.
According to investigators, beginning in at least 2018 and continuing until January 2022, Ritter and Mills conspired to defraud an employee-owned business operating in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Ritter, who worked as an executive for the company, used his position to submit false invoices on behalf of a business set up in Mills’s name. The invoices billed the business for services that Mills’s company never performed, resulting in $3,797,500.00 in fraudulent payments made to Ritter and Mills during that time.
“Ritter and Mills went to great lengths to disguise a years-long scheme to siphon millions from an unsuspecting employer, using false invoices, shell companies, and layered financial lies,” said Christopher J. Altemus Jr., IRS-CI special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Office. “Let this case serve as a warning: complex fraud schemes may be layered in lies and paperwork, but they are never beyond the reach of IRS Criminal Investigation special agents. IRS-CI will aggressively track illicit financial activity and dismantle criminal enterprises, no matter how sophisticated. Those who think they can get away with defrauding businesses or taxpayers should think again.”
“The sentence imposed on these two defendants should serve as a stark reminder that criminal activity motivated by greed comes at a price,” said FBI Oklahoma City Special Agent in Charge Doug Goodwater. “The FBI is committed to ensuring those who engage in fraudulent activity are held accountable through the justice system.”
“The wounds may not be physical, but the harm caused by fraudsters is still very real. I commend the investigators and prosecutors who worked tirelessly to ensure that the defendants answered for their crime,” said United States Attorney Christopher J. Wilson.
The Honorable Ronald A. White, Chief U.S. District Judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, presided over the hearing. Ritter and Mills were allowed to remain on previous bond with conditions of release and will self-report into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending transportation to a designated United States Bureau of Prisons facility by June 23, 2025, to serve a non-paroleable sentence of incarceration.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kara Traster, Joshua Satter, and Clay Compton represented the United States.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative 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 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.