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MARION, Iowa (KCRG) – A Marion financial planner was sentenced to three months in federal prison for failing to pay more than $250,000 in taxes.
43-year-old Matthew Westberry pleaded guilty to two counts of failure to file a tax return in July 2025.
Westberry did not file tax returns from 2006 to 2012, according to court documents. The IRS contacted him in 2013, and he filed his overdue returns but did not pay the taxes owed from 2008 to 2013.
He then stopped filing tax returns entirely from 2014 to 2021. During that period, Westberry earned nearly $1.5 million from financial planning. He owed more than $250,000 in federal income taxes.
Following Westberry’s failure to pay taxes between 2008 and 2013, the IRS placed two liens on a property he was in the process of buying. Westberry did not complete the purchase, but the liens remained.
Court documents say the property owner attempted to sell the property to a different buyer, and the owner found the IRS liens in Westberry’s name. To remove them, Westberry submitted forged lien release documents to the Linn County Recorder.
Westberry was convicted of state-level forgery for filing fraudulent documents that appeared to be from the IRS.
Westberry was sentenced to three months in federal prison. He will also serve one year of supervised release and three months of home confinement.
He must pay $264,502 in restitution to the IRS. He paid $36,000 before sentencing.
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