Kansas City man sentenced for embezzling $612,000 from employer

Date: August 27, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Kansas City, MO — A Kansas City, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for reimbursing himself $612,000 in fictitious business-related expenses from his employer.

Jeremy M. Ubben was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Greg Kays to 33 months in federal prison and 3 additional years of supervised release. The court ordered Ubben to pay $612,000 in restitution to his former employer, $127,589 to the Internal Revenue Service, and $27,038 to the State of Missouri. The court also ordered Ubben to forfeit to the government $40,000 in laundered stolen funds.

On Feb. 5, 2025, Ubben pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, one count of income tax evasion, and one count of money laundering. Ubben admitted that he embezzled $612,000 from his law firm employer between March 2023 and Aug. 2024. According to court documents, Ubben was employed as the firm’s business manager and had full administrator rights to the firm’s online payroll processing program. Beginning in March 2023, Ubben submitted and approved for himself reimbursement requests for fictious business expense expenditures totaling tens of thousands of dollars. Ubben also admitted that he laundered proceeds from his theft through his TD Ameritrade brokerage account.

Ubben admitted that he failed to file a federal income tax return for tax year 2023. During that year, Ubben had taxable income of $262,000. The total federal tax loss for that year is $98,785.30. The total tax loss to the state of Missouri is $27,038.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Constance. It was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations, and the Homeland Security Investigations.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement 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 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.