Archive

June 8, 2016

Two Memphis, Tennessee, area residents were sentenced to prison for conspiring to defraud the United States and aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. Jeremy Blanchard, 35, and Erik Pittman, 35, both of Memphis, were sentenced to serve 70 and 33 months in prison, respectively, to be followed by three years and one year of supervised release, respectively. According to court documents, Blanchard and Pittman were partners in a return preparation business, Mo Money Taxes, which operated three locations in the Richmond, Virginia, area. Blanchard, Pittman and others prepared numerous false tax returns for their customers for the 2011 tax year. Blanchard and Pittman admitted that they created and inflated fictitious and fraudulent tax credits, including the Earned Income Credit and the American Opportunity Credit, to claim tax refunds that customers were not entitled to receive. DOJ

June 6, 2016

A Stillwell, Kansas, man pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of theft of government funds, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. Richard Drake, 60, admitted that he obtained more than $2 million from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by filing false tax returns in the names of his clients. Those false returns claimed refunds that Drake directed into accounts he controlled. In his plea agreement, Drake admitted that he used the identities of his clients to perpetrate his fraud without their knowledge. The tax returns that Drake filed caused the U.S. Department of the Treasury to issue large income tax refunds that Drake then converted to his own use. As part of his plea agreement, Drake has agreed to serve 48 months in prison and to pay $2,432,147 in restitution to the IRS. DOJ

May 25, 2016

A DeSoto, Texas, resident was indicted on 29 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false income tax returns and three counts of willfully failing to file income tax returns, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. According to court documents, Vicki Louise Walker, was a tax preparer doing business under the name Vicki Walker Tax Services LLC in Dallas, Texas. Walker is alleged to have prepared numerous tax returns for tax years 2010 through 2013 on which she reported false items, including false filing status, false business expenses, false capital losses and false charitable donations. It is further alleged that Walker willfully failed to file her own tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for tax years 2011 through 2013. DOJ

May 23, 2016

A San Diego, California, workers’ compensation attorney pleaded guilty in the Western District of Missouri to one count of filing a false tax return, the Justice Department’s Tax Division announced. According to court documents, Ron Mix, 78, entered into an arrangement where he received professional athlete referrals from a non-attorney so Mix and his law firm, the Law Offices of Ron Mix, could file workers’ compensation claims in California on the former athletes’ behalf. After receiving these referrals, Mix agreed to make donations to Project Contact Africa (PCA), as directed by the non-attorney. Mix admitted that between 2010 and 2013, he made approximately $155,000 in donations to PCA and that these payments represented illegal referral payments that he falsely claimed on his personal income tax return as charitable deductions. DOJ

May 20, 2016

An Oregon woman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims, one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft for running a federal income tax refund fraud scheme, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. Danyelle Calcagno, 41, admitted to filing at least 224 false federal income tax returns that fraudulently claimed a total of $1,220,246 in tax refunds, generally between $3,500 and $7,000 per return. Calcagno filed the fraudulent tax returns using Internet access at Portland-area hotels to disguise the source of filing. Calcagno filed the false tax returns using the names and social security numbers of other individuals obtained directly and through recruiters, including Latisha L. Simmons, 36, of Phoenix, Arizona. Calcagno directed the IRS to deposit the income tax refunds into bank accounts and onto stored value debit cards that she could access and control in order to divide the proceeds of the fraud and make it more difficult for law enforcement to identify Calcagno as the filer of the false tax returns. DOJ

May 17, 2016

Two brothers were sentenced to prison in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland after pleading guilty in January for perpetrating a scheme in which they filed 46 fraudulent income tax returns seeking refunds in excess of $224 million, announced the Justice Department’s Tax Division. Sean and Eric Gallman were each ordered to pay restitution to the IRS in the amount of $16,512,492. According to evidence presented by the government, the Gallmans established trusts and business entities and used mailboxes at numerous private commercial postal carrier stores in Maryland and North Carolina as the addresses for the trusts and business entities. The defendants, acting as trustees and agents, mailed fraudulent tax returns to the IRS in the names of the trusts and businesses requesting refunds. DOJ

May 13, 2016

Michael Mancil Brown was found guilty by a federal jury sitting in Nashville for engaging in an extortion and wire fraud scheme involving former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Brown, 37, of Franklin, Tennessee, was convicted of six counts of wire fraud and six counts of using facilities of interstate commerce to commit extortion. According to testimony at trial, evidence recovered from a computer seized from the home of Brown in 2012 implicated Brown in a scheme to defraud Romney, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and others by falsely claiming that he had gained access to the PricewaterhouseCoopers internal computer network and had stolen tax documents for Romney and his wife, Ann D. Romney, for tax years prior to 2010. Brown was found guilty of participating in the scheme in which a letter delivered in August 2012 to the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Franklin demanded that $1 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin be deposited to a specific Bitcoin account to prevent the release of the purportedly stolen Romney tax returns. The letter also invited interested parties who wanted the allegedly stolen Romney tax documents to be released to contribute $1 million to another Bitcoin account. DOJ

May 11, 2016

A federal grand jury in the District of Nevada returned a superseding indictment charging a Las Vegas woman with two counts of filing false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and one count of corruptly endeavoring to impair and impede the due administration of the internal revenue laws. According to the superseding indictment, from at least 2005 through at least 2009, Judith Woodward, then known as Judith Atwell, was the 99 percent owner and joint operator of a dry cleaning business, Canyon Gate Cleaners, in Las Vegas, Nevada, which she held in the name of a partnership called Canyon Enterprises LLC. Woodward is alleged to have underreported the gross receipts of Canyon Gate Cleaners on the partnership’s 2005 through 2009 tax returns. She is also alleged to have underreported her personal income on her 2005 through 2009 individual income tax returns. According to the superseding indictment, between at least 2005 and 2009, Woodward concealed the true gross receipts of the business by depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash receipts into personal bank accounts she controlled or by not depositing the cash receipts into any bank account. DOJ

May 11, 2016

A federal court has ordered West Palm Beach-area tax return preparer Paul Jean not to prepare federal tax returns for anyone except himself. The order was entered after Jean failed to respond to the United States’ civil complaint. According to the complaint, Jean has operated under the business names Whiz Tax and Rejoice Tax Services. The complaint alleges he has prepared returns that claim fabricated or inflated tax credits including claiming improper earned income tax credits, education credits, or fuel credits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that Jean, directly or indirectly, has prepared and filed more than 3,000 tax returns since 2012, according to the complaint, and that the harm Jean’s conduct has inflicted on the U.S. Treasury may be in the millions of dollars. DOJ

May 11, 2016

A federal grand jury sitting in New Orleans, Louisiana, returned an indictment against a LaPlace, Louisiana, woman charging her with 37 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, eight counts of contempt of court, one count of bank fraud and one count of forgery of a judge’s signature. According to the indictment, Shawanda Nevers aka Shawanda Hawkins and Shawanda Bryant, operated a tax return preparation business under several names and at various locations in the LaPlace area. It is alleged that between 2011 and 2016, Nevers filed 37 false tax returns for clients that claimed a variety of fraudulent losses and deductions, including false Schedule C businesses and false unreimbursed employee expenses. In September 2014, a federal judge permanently enjoined Nevers from preparing federal tax returns. Nevers is charged with contempt of court for violating that injunction by preparing eight federal income tax returns in 2015 and 2016. Nevers also is charged with forging the signature of a federal bankruptcy judge on a false document purporting to be an order reinstating a bankruptcy petition and with bank fraud for submitting a fraudulent claim for losses supposedly caused by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. DOJ