Mill Creek general contractor to pay $650K after tax fraud plea

Published 12:24 pm Friday, October 23, 2026

EVERETT — A Mill Creek contractor is expected to pay more than $650,000 in restitution and spend a week in jail after pleading guilty to felony tax fraud.

Linda Kim Brown, 37, was accused by investigators with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office of accepting large down payments for home renovations that were never completed and filing fraudulent tax returns, according to a probable cause affidavit filed last year.

Brown allegedly owned and operated KIAX Remodel LLC and AURA Construction LLC, a pair of Mill-Creek based general contracting businesses, charging documents said.

At least three people filed complaints with the Department of Labor and Industries in 2023 alleging they’d reached agreements for jobs that weren’t done, according to court documents.

One woman alleged she’d paid more than $325,000 for a remodel of her Lynnwood home that was never started, court records said.

Another woman filed a complaint saying she’d given Brown a $111,000 deposit to build an accessory dwelling unit at an Edmonds home. Work never got underway on that project either, court documents said.

A Bellevue man said he paid Brown $173,000 for an addition at his Bellevue home that wasn’t completed, according to charging documents.

“Ms. Brown never performed a single day of physical work on our home,” the man said in a victim impact statement filed with the court. “Not one board was cut; not one shovel of dirt was turned.”

The man wrote in court documents that he ultimately chose to sell his Bellevue home, because of the work that went undone.

“This was not one failed project but a pattern that swept up multiple families,” he wrote.

Brown also amassed complaints for smaller down payments on projects that weren’t completed, as well as several projects that were finished, but required costly corrections by other contractors, court documents said.

At the same time, the Department of Revenue alleged Brown failed to pay mandated taxes and insurance premiums, according to charging documents. The agency said Brown’s businesses made more than $1.5-million while tax filings indicated she had no business at all.

Brown pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of first-degree theft and filing a false or fraudulent tax return during her initial arraignment in April 2025, court documents said.

She changed her plea in August of this year after reaching a deal that reduced the charges to two felony counts of filing a false or fraudulent tax return, according to court documents.

On Oct. 16, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Jehiel Baer sentenced Brown to serve seven days in the Snohomish County Jail in addition to paying a total of $664,884.94 in restitution to her victims, including $72,400 to the state Department of Revenue after the others are repaid, court documents said.

“What was taken from us was more than money: it was the basic trust that lets a family hand a contractor a check and believe the work will come — the trust we once had in people, and in society itself,” the Bellevue man wrote in his victim impact statement. “That trust took a lifetime to build and took Ms. Brown only months to destroy.”

Ian Davis-Leonard: 425-339-3097; ian.davis-leonard@heraldnet.com