Business Owner Sentenced to 51 Months for Employment Tax Crimes and Fraud

Ephantus Mwangi, a 48-year-old Missouri businessman and Kenyan national, was sentenced on October 5, 2026, to 51 months in prison for willfully failing to pay employment taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree also ordered Mwangi to serve three years of supervised release and pay $1,597,835.24 in restitution to the United States.

According to court documents and statements, Mwangi owned and operated True Payment Solutions, Inc., a Kansas-based company providing credit-card processing services, as well as a separate entity named True POS Solutions, Inc. True Payment Solutions employed between 20 and 30 individuals. As the person responsible for the business's finances, Mwangi was required to withhold Social Security, Medicare, and federal income taxes from employee wages and remit them quarterly to the IRS, along with filing employment tax returns.

From at least the third quarter of 2017 through the fourth quarter of 2018, Mwangi withheld $331,404.33 from his employees' paychecks but failed to submit the funds or file the required quarterly returns. Between 2016 and 2019, he transferred more than $1.5 million from corporate accounts to his personal accounts instead of paying employment taxes due. Court records indicate he used these funds for luxury vehicle loans, rent for an 11,000-square-foot mansion in San Antonio, private school tuition, casino visits, and a $763,000 transfer to an entity in Kenya.

Additionally, Mwangi willfully failed to file individual tax returns for 2017 and 2020, submitted late returns for 2018 and 2019, and did not file corporate tax returns for his two companies from 2017 through 2019. In total, his actions resulted in a tax loss exceeding $1.5 million to the U.S. government.

Mwangi was initially scheduled for sentencing on April 27, 2026, but failed to appear. He remained a fugitive for approximately six weeks before being apprehended during a traffic stop, during which he provided law enforcement with a false name and date of birth.

The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, with support from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Texas State Police, and prosecuted by the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas.

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