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

Tagged in: Tax Fraud,