Dallas, TX – A Dallas business owner convicted of failing to remit employment taxes withheld from her employees has been sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison, authorities announced.
Heaven Marie Diaz, 57, was indicted in 2023 and convicted by a jury in June 2025 on five counts of failing to pay over trust fund taxes. On [yesterday’s date], Senior U.S. District Judge David Godbey sentenced Diaz to 97 months in federal prison and ordered her to pay $799,033.47 in restitution.
According to court documents, Diaz was the owner and CEO of Pursuit of Excellence, a Dallas-based staffing company. Between 2015 and 2017, she withheld payroll taxes from her employees’ paychecks but failed to remit more than $3 million to the Internal Revenue Service, as required by law…