A cabinet manufacturer who pleaded guilty in January to making about $1 million worth of fraudulent charges on his customers’ credit cards was sentenced to federal prison on Tuesday.
James Christopher Robinson, 52, of Granite Falls, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. A judge also ordered Robinson to pay more than $4.4 million in restitution.
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. Robinson says he regrets what happened. He referred other questions to his attorney, who could not immediately be reached via phone message.
Robinson was the owner of multiple cabinet manufacturing and retail businesses in the Hickory area, including Cabinet Solutions USA, Best Cabinet Doors, Cabinet Doors Fast, and Cox Manufacturing (collectively, Cabinet Companies), according to court records.
Between March 2020 and April 2023, Robinson accessed the credit cards of Cabinet Companies’ customers and 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 more than $3.1 million in owed employment taxes.
On Jan. 17, Robinson pleaded guilty to access device fraud and failure to truthfully account for and pay over trust fund taxes. Robinson remains 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, a common practice in federal courts.
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,” according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.