Princess Soft Owner Gets a Year in Prison for Failure to Pay Taxes

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the former owner of an Edina toy company to 12 months and a day in prison for failing to pay federal employment taxes, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.

Kim Robert Calkins, former co-owner of Princess Soft Toys Inc. pleaded guilty in September to the charge as part of a plea agreement in which he admitted failing to pay employment taxes that had been withheld from paychecks from the third quarter of 2008 to the final quarter of 2010.

Calkins never paid the amount owed despite receiving regular notices that the taxes were due. In the end, the total tax loss was $852,361.54.

In a related case, the judge in February 2012 sentenced Calkins’ wife and former Princess Soft co-owner Sandra Lee Calkins to 66 months in federal prison for defrauding Central Bank and 42 investors out of about $9 million.

In her plea agreement, Sandra Calkins admitted falsifying financial statements about Princess Soft between January 2008 and March 2010 in order to renew a $3.25 million line of credit at Central Bank. The company made a total of nearly $3.6 million in withdrawals against the line of credit, causing the bank to lose about $1.6 million.

She also persuaded individual investors to lose more than $7 million by falsifying financial statements and making other misrepresentations.