Peter Thomas, former star of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for not paying over $2.5 million in employment taxes, according to TMZ.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell Sr. also hit him with two years of supervised release and a restitution order. According to the news outlet, Thomas pleaded guilty in June to failing to pay trust fund taxes in a U.S. District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina.
From 2017 to 2023, he reportedly let several businesses—like Club One CLT, Sports ONE, and Bar One in Miami Beach and Baltimore—skip out on paying employment taxes, including over $1.7 million that should’ve been deducted from his employees’ paychecks, according to federal prosecutors.
Before his sentencing was handed to him, Peter posted a video update to his Instagram where he delivered a message to young business owners telling them to “please learn [from his] mistake.” In his message, he said he was willing to “face the music” for “consistently withholding taxes for business over 10 years.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Caryn Finley advocated for a minimum two-year prison sentence, claiming that Thomas acted out of greed and kept disregarding the law.
Thomas, she said, used the money to “personally enrich himself and to expand and support his other business ventures.”
This includes over $250,000 spent on luxury items from brands like Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Givenchy.
“Americans can spend their money as they see fit, including on business ventures,” Finley notes in his sentencing memo. “However, they cannot steal other people’s money—in this case their employees’ payroll taxes—to prop up their otherwise failing business ventures.”