Man in Marietta Caught for Filing False Income Tax Refunds
A man named Arnold Tobias Gervais, 34, had pleaded guilty this past Wednesday for an attempted scheme to defraud the IRS for over $3.4 million in federal income tax refunds.
The United States Attorney’s Office and the IRS are always on an aggressive search to sift out those that are cheating on taxes, as they take away from those who have to pay their fair share of taxes, as they did with Gervais.
As stated by United States Attorney Yates, Gervais was convicted for his crime in May 2008 and was given 5 years in prison by the Superior Court of Cobby Country. He was caught for submitting a fraudulent tax return, attempting to get a tax refund of over $600,000. For that charge, Gervais was incarcerated until February 26, 2010.
During his custody, Gervais worked through his wife at the time being to file a phony income tax return with the IRS for 2008, containing a claim for a payment of income tax refund of $811,073. Gervais fully knew that these claims were completely fraudulent. In addition to these false claims, he has been caught for six more false claims, dating back all the way to 2004.
All of his false tax returns claimed that there were a significant amount of wages earned from a fictitious business called “Safety Shoes and More, Inc.” that was recorded to be located in Rome, Georgia. Altogether, the total potential tax loss for the IRS was tallied up to $3,488,135.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: avoiding taxes, federal income tax, federal tax fraud, income tax, tax crime, tax ecasion, tax fraud
Man in Clarksville Guilty of Tax Fraud
A man in Clarksville had pleaded guilty in a federal court for the crime of filing a false tax income on January 14, 2013.
The man’s name was James Robert Sanford, 53, and in addition to filing a false tax income he was also guilty for aiding and abetting a false claim for a federal income tax refund. Jerry E. Martin, an Attorney for Tennessee, officially announced the news.
Sanford had brushes with the law a couple of years before this incident. On November 30, 2011, Sanford had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Nashville, and was charged with 6 counts of filing false income tax returns. Based on the indictment filed, Sanford had prepared and filed 2006 and 2007 federal income tax returns for him and his wife, knowing full well that the returns were fraudulent. The 2006 tax return claimed refunds of $5,774 and the 2007 tax return claimed refunds of $4,276.
Not only has Sanford filed false income tax returns for himself, but he did it for others as well, making a profit through his schemes. The returns that he claimed for these refunds for others were from $3,490 to $7,128.
Sanford will be sentenced on April 8, and he is likely to face a maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment, in addition to a $250,000 fine for each false income tax return he made. He has come clean for all the false income tax returns he has claimed, and will be sentenced by Chief Judge William J. Haynes, Jr.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: federal income tax, federal tax, federal tax fraud, income tax, tax crime, tax evasion, tax fraud
Florida Prisoner Caught Filing Fraudulent Federal Income Tax Returns
It seems that prison isn’t a good enough reason to keep you from cheating on your federal income tax.
WJHG (Source Below) has reported that Michael William Joseph III, an inmate of the Apalachee Correctional Institution in Florida, has pleaded guilty for filing fraudulent federal income tax returns to the IRS. This wouldn’t be Joseph’s first conviction of tax fraud, however. He has been serving time for faking federal income tax returns dating all the way back to 2006.
Prison, however, hasn’t kept Joseph from trying to scam the government with some fake federal income tax returns. He had filled out a series of tax forms with fabricated amounts of income and deductions. He had used the identities of his co-inmates in order to validate his returns. The illegitimately refunded federal income tax would then be deposited to various accounts he had control over.
What had tipped off Joseph’s tax scam was the size of his illegal refunds. Joseph had sought a total of nearly $180,000 in federal income tax returns. For a time it seemed that Joseph had managed to pull his scheme off when the government cashed him out for an alleged $50,000.
But investigators quickly got wind of his scam and successfully retrieved over $17,500 of the unlawfully refunded federal income tax from his personal bank account. An additional $11,600 was found in the mother’s ex-husband’s backyard.
The fifty three year old Joseph was indicted on various charges including but not limited to filing false federal income tax returns. Other charges include theft and mail fraud, amounting to a prison sentence of up to twenty years.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, State Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: avoiding taxes, federal income tax, federal tax, income tax, IRS, tax code, tax court, tax crime, tax evasion, tax fraud