Montreal-area entrepreneur receives jail sentence, ordered to pay $1 million for tax fraud

A sales receipt shows a 5 per cent GST and a 9.075 per cent QST at a store in Montreal on Saturday, December 14, 2024. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

An entrepreneur will pay a heavy price for failing to pay his company’s taxes and remit QST and GST revenues to the government.

Jessy Wilford, of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, will spend the next two years behind bars for tax fraud. He and his firm, KJ Solutions, were also ordered to pay fines totalling just over $1 million.

Revenu Québec announced on Friday the decision handed down on June 29 by the Court of Quebec following guilty pleas.

According to Revenu Québec’s investigation, Wilford’s company, which specializes in selling maintenance contracts for wall-mounted heat pumps, failed to file its income tax returns and several other tax returns.

However, according to the tax agency, the company did indeed collect GST and QST from its customers but failed to report any of it to the tax authorities. The company also failed to report a significant portion of its revenue.

Specifically, KJ Solutions collected more than $1.7 million from 507 transactions carried out between January 2021 and February 2022. Still, no tax returns, including income tax returns, had been filed since the company was registered with Revenu Québec.

Revenu Québec’s investigation determined that the company failed to pay $203,555 in taxes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 10, 2026.