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Steve Parks Sentenced to 27 Months for Tax Credit Fraud

2 min read

Stephen K. Parks of Little Rock, who pleaded guilty in May to a federal wire fraud charge related to his sale of refined coal tax credits, was sentenced Wednesday to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $845,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

He was ordered to report for prison on Dec. 28. After his sentence, he will serve three years on supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes accepted the sentence negotiated by Parks, 62, and federal prosecutors after an investigation that became public three years ago when the FBI executed a search warrant at Parks’ home in the Heights neighborhood.

Parks agreed to forfeit a total of $7.5 million in real and personal property. He was allowed to keep the Heights home and some $73,000 in cash that federal agents had seized there.

In a case complicated by the fact that Parks established two companies that sold refined coal tax credits, he ultimately admitted that one of the companies, Global Coal, improperly sold $723,450 in tax credits.

Global Coal never refined or sold coal and never filed a federal tax return, according to a statement issued by U.S. Attorney Christopher Thyer. Prosecutors said Park used most of the proceeds from the sale of the tax credits for personal use, including buying a $300,000 house to tear down and use as his family’s back yard.

Some of the property forfeited was associated with tax credits sold by Parks’ King Coal LLC. Although he was not charged with any crime related to King Coal, he agreed to stop challenging those forefeitures.

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