Former Portage Mayor James Snyder has requested the release of grand jury transcripts that led to his November 2016 indictment, charging him with obstructing the IRS.
U.S. District Court Northern District of Indiana Chief Judge Holly Brady sentenced Snyder to three years on probation and repayment to the IRS on March 10, his 48th birthday.
Snyder will have to pay $78,111.57 in restitution, which is what he still owes for obstructing the IRS, Brady said, made in monthly payments of $570 a month. Brady said Snyder has paid $18,000 of his debt.
Snyder filed an appeal March 23 to his probation sentence on his conviction for obstructing the IRS.
Snyder’s appeal includes the denial of his motion for acquittal, motion for new trial for obstructing the IRS and denial of a motion for leave to file a motion for a new trial for obstructing the IRS, according to the notice of appeal.
Snyder’s legal team is requesting the transcripts based on the testimony of IRS agent Jerry Hatagan during Snyder’s second sentencing hearing on the obstructing the IRS charge in March.
“Testimony by former agent Hatagan at the second sentencing of James Snyder revealed that despite the government’s contrary claims at trial in the closing argument, the government had no evidence that James Snyder created false invoices,” according to a motion for the grand jury transcripts filed Friday.
In the sentencing memorandum, prosecutors argued that between January 2010 and April 2013 Snyder executed a scheme to obstruct the IRS’s collection of his unpaid business and personal taxes.
In 2007, Snyder created First Financial Trust Mortgage LLC, a mortgage loan origination business, where he withheld a portion of employees’ paychecks for payroll and income taxes, Medicare and Social Security, prosecutors said.
But in 2007, 2008 and 2009, Snyder didn’t pay the IRS the funds taken from employees’ paychecks. Snyder also didn’t file IRS forms on time, prosecutors said.
By November 2009, the IRS discovered that the company owed approximately $97,000, prosecutors said, while Snyder paid himself approximately $110,000 from the company bank account.
In January 2010, Snyder signed an employment agreement with a mortgage company called GVC and opened a “branch office” out of the First Financial Trust Mortgage LLC office. Under the agreement, GVC hired Snyder as an employee and hired and paid all his employees, prosecutors said.
In 2010, GVC paid Snyder approximately $141,891.27, prosecutors said. Also in 2010, Snyder began creating “phony invoices” from a company called SRC to bill First Financial Trust Mortgage LLC for “consulting” work, prosecutors said.
GVC paid SRC over $400,000 in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and SRC received deposits totaling over $640,000 in that same time frame, prosecutors said.
“By routing GVC’s payments through SRC instead of FFTM, (Snyder) concealed FFTM’s true financial status from the IRS. It was a shell game to obstruct the IRS in its tax assessment and collection obligations,” prosecutors said.
In total, the tax loss in this case is $125,149.57: $96,111.57 in what FFTM failed to pay and $29,038 in Snyder’s personal taxes, prosecutors said.
Hatagan testified that if an IRS obstruction charge like Snyder’s was considered “solely on number” and not the manner in which it was committed, it wouldn’t be prosecuted.
“But it was all the other aggravating factors in this case that caused it to happen how it happened,” Hatagan said. Those factors were that Snyder was an elected official and that the tax scheme lasted multiple years, he said.
Snyder didn’t own GVC, Hatagan said, and GVC told IRS agents that it was common practice for the company to acquire other companies. But “the problem we had,” Hatagan said, was that under GVC ownership, Snyder was using SRC to invoice FFTM.
While Snyder “painted a dire picture to the IRS,” Hatagan said, he was receiving a paycheck from GVC and getting payments from invoices to SRC.
Brady ultimately ruled that Hatagan’s testimony didn’t alter her opinion on the sentencing enhancements.
In the motion to release the grand jury testimony, Snyder’s legal team referenced Hatagan’s testimony about the dissolution of FFTM in June 2010 and then GVC assuming the name FFTM. When GVC assumed FFTM, the company hired Snyder to do business as FFTM, according to court records.
The owner of GVC testified before the grand jury that the SRC invoices issued by Snyder “were legitimate and for marketing services required by GVC” when Snyder was initially under investigation, according to court records.
Snyder’s attorneys argued that only two witnesses testified about the facts the government alleged were the basis for the obstruction charge. The fake invoices were brought up by the prosecution in opening and closing arguments, though unclear during which trial, in court records and in court hearings, according to court records.
“The government knew that, in fact, James Snyder did not obstruct the administration of the internal revenue laws. The government also knew that there was no relationship between the payment of his personal taxes and the payment of the payroll taxes that were due,” according to the court records.
The grand jury transcripts should be released so that Snyder’s legal team can see if prosecutors discussed the fake invoices with the grand jury or to see if prosecutors expanded the charge against Snyder without going to the grand jury, according to court records.
“Snyder seeks to prevent the injustice of having been charged with and then convicted of an offense based on false or misleading evidence. At this point in the proceedings, where Snyder has had two trials, two sentencings, and is pursuing his second direct appeal, there is no demonstrable need for secrecy,” according to court records.
Ahead of his sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz said the prosecution requested a 21-month prison sentence. Schwartz said the sentencing guidelines for the charge range between 33 months and 36 months, so 21 months is lower than that and consistent with Snyder’s previous sentencing in the case.
Minkler said Brady should consider three years’ probation or probation and home confinement instead of prison time.
Snyder asked for a new trial on his conviction for defrauding the IRS in federal court filings in October 2025. Federal prosecutors, in their response, said his request is untimely and without merit.
This is the latest chapter in a saga that began almost 10 years ago when Snyder was indicted on one count of defrauding the IRS and two counts of bribery, one involving towing contracts and the other involving garbage trucks.
A jury in U.S. District Court in Hammond found Snyder not guilty on the charge involving the towing contract, and convicted him twice on the garbage truck charge, a case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which deemed in June of last year that the $13,000 payment Snyder received over a garbage truck contract was a gratuity, not a bribe, because the payment came after the contract and not before. The case was remanded to the lower courts.
A jury convicted Snyder on the IRS charge, which involved his personal business and not his duties as mayor at the time, and that conviction had remained unchallenged.
Snyder, a Republican, was first elected mayor in 2011 and reelected in 2015, a term cut short by his federal conviction in February 2019.
akukulka@post-trib.com
