James Christopher Robinson, 52, of Granite Falls, N.C., was sentenced
today to 30 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release for tax and credit card
fraud, announced Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.
Robinson was also ordered to pay $4,434,225.44 in restitution.
Robert M. DeWitt, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Charlotte Division, Jason Byrnes, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Secret Service,
Charlotte Field Office, and Donald “Trey” Eakins, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal
Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Charlotte Field Office, join U.S. Attorney
King in making today’s announcement.
According to filed documents and the sentencing hearing, Robinson was the owner of multiple
cabinet manufacturing and retail businesses in the Hickory area, including Cabinet Solutions
USA Inc., Best Cabinet Doors, LLC, Cabinet Doors Fast, LLC, and Cox Manufacturing, LLC
(collectively, Cabinet Companies). Court documents show that, between March 2020 and April
2023, Robinson accessed the credit cards of Cabinet Companies’ customers and without
authorization made 294 fraudulent credit card charges totaling approximately $1 million.
Robinson also created at least four counterfeit checks totaling more than $93,000, using
information from actual checks written to his Cabinet Companies by customers.
According to court records, for tax years 2017 to 2022, Robinson caused two of his companies to
fail to comply with their employment tax obligations by failing to timely account for and pay
over more than $3.1 million in employment taxes. Court documents indicate that Robinson used
the stolen funds to make large cash withdrawals from his business accounts and make hundreds
of thousands of dollars in cash deposits at casinos.
On January 17, 2024, Robinson pleaded guilty to access device fraud and failure to truthfully
account for and pay over trust fund taxes. He is released on bond and will be ordered to report to
the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence upon designation of a federal facility.
In announcing Robinson’s sentence, U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell described Robinson’s
offenses as “serious,” and said that there was “a lot of deliberate, fraudulent, selfish conduct.”