The owner of Powell, Tenn.-based HR Comp LLC, a professional employer organization, was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in federal prison for conspiracy in a workers’ compensation scheme that involved collecting premiums for nonexistent workers’ comp policies, the US Department of Justice reported.

Andrea Rudd, 38, owned HR Comp and conducted business through several PEO subsidiaries. Between 2011 and 2015, instead of remitting the money collected from her client companies for payroll taxes to the IRS, Rudd converted the funds for her own personal use, the department said.  Additionally, client agencies sent money to HR Comp, in exchange for what Rudd and her co-conspirators represented to be worker’s compensation insurance.  However, false certificates of insurance were provided to the client companies and the insurance was never purchased.

Rudd will serve five years for tax evasion and three years for mail and wire fraud, consecutively; upon her release from prison, she will face three years supervised probation. Rudd was also ordered to pay nearly $15.8 million in restitution to the victims of her offenses, including about $10.4 million to the Internal Revenue Service.

Investigative agencies involved in this case included IRS-Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported the investigation began in 2013 when a California worker was killed on the job. His employer subsequently discovered HR Comp had faked insurance papers, leading federal authorities to raid the business and seize documents in 2014.