Date: November 2, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov United States Attorney Ronald C. Gathe, Jr., announced the conviction of Dr. Melissa Rose Barrett of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Clive, Iowa, with tax evasion. Barrett was indicted by a federal grand jury on September 8, 2022. After a seven-day trial before U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson, the jury unanimously convicted Barrett of one count of tax evasion. Barrett, a physician, owned and operated an urgent care clinic known as Stat Care Clinics, L.L.C. d/b/a Central Stat Care. As the evidence at trial demonstrated, for tax years 2007 through 2017, Barrett owed significant taxes totaling approximately $1.6 million, excluding interest and penalties. The IRS notified Dr. Barrett that she owed taxes multiple times and through various means. Dr. Barrett undertook various steps to evade the payment of her outstanding tax liability, including preparing and filing with the IRS a false form underreporting income and inaccurately detailing her assets. Barrett also accumulated and concealed cash in a safe instead of depositing it in the bank. Finally, Barrett purchased millions of dollars of real estate and personal property in the names of nominees, including, but not limited to, a personal residence, a boat, an airplane, and thousands of acres of farmland and hunting land. The property purchased in the names of nominees totaled over $6.7 million. As a result of the conviction, Dr. Barrett now faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison as well as a period of supervised release, restitution, and monetary penalties. This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (CI) and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Edward H. Warner and Elizabeth White, and Trial Attorney Wilson Stamm of the Department of Justice Tax Division. 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. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
