Malden Restaurateur's Former Bookkeeper Charged In Federal Court

MALDEN, MA — The owner of a firm that provided payroll services to small businesses in New England, including a Malden restaurant, has been accused in federal court of defrauding her clients by diverting the funds set aside for payroll taxes to her own company, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Patricia Lindau, 65, of Newburg, ME, was charged and has agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion. According to the plea agreement filed Monday, the government will recommend a low sentence, one year of supervised release and restitution of $1,393,430.

George Lambos, owner of Fresco's Roast Beef & Seafood in Malden, told Patch he was among the dozens of business owners that Lindau defrauded. In July, Lambos owed more than $100,000 in taxes – money that Lindau assured him had been paid to the IRS.

Lambos told Patch he hired Lindau's company, Northeast Abacus Inc., to run his payroll when he opened Fresco's in 2016. Toward the end of 2017, he first started getting notices from the IRS and Department of Revenue about late and owed payments, but said Lindau showed him weekly reports showing the tax deposits she was supposedly making.

"She just sounded very believable," Lambos said. He described Lindau as a "con artist" who was "so personable on the phone."

Federal authorities said between 2017 and the spring of 2020, Lindau withdrew payroll taxes from her clients' and deposited them into her firm's business checking account. She then sent each client a weekly report falsely indicating that the funds had been paid to the IRS and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, according to the USAO.

Lindau assured her clients that letters they received from the IRS and Revenue Department indicating their payroll taxes had not been paid were a mistake, the USAO said. In Lambos's case, she pinned the error on a former employee who had been fired for applying the funds to the wrong federal ID number, he told Patch.

Lambos cut ties with Lindau at the end of 2019, only to find out months later that he owed more than $100,000 in payroll taxes. This was common among her clients, many of whom discovered their employees' payroll taxes had not been paid after closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal authorities said.

Lindau failed to pay more than $2 million during the scheme, causing her clients a net loss of over $1.1 million, the USAO said.

Previously: Malden Restaurateur Says He Was Victim Of 'Con Artist' Bookkeeper