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
Chiropractor Guilty of Federal Tax Evasion
Rockford – Cevene Care Clinic owner was found guilty for federal income tax evasion last December 21, 2012.
Todd R. Cevene, 42, owner of Cevene Management Group, Inc., Ceven Enterprises, LLC, and, Todd laska Asset Preservation Trust, pleaded guilty for intentionally evading payment of federal income tax. In his plea agreement, he divulged that he has been transferring income from Cevene Care Clinic to his other companies in 2004. He further elaborated that the amassed money were then used to pay for personal expenses knowing that those payments would be improperly used as business expense deductions on entities’ federal income tax returns.
Also in the agreement, he confessed of having most of the money to be transferred directly to his personal account which were not included as income on his personal federal income tax returns.
Cevene admitted that his purpose for transferring the funds to his account was to minimize the risk of exposing his attempts for tax evasion. It has also been found that he made more than one transfer between accounts to make it less suspicious.
Finally, Cevene wrote in the agreement that he owes a large amount of federal income tax for 2004 that he failed to report or pay accordingly. He continued his tax evasion for another 3 years accumulating a total of $91,568 under payment of federal income tax.
Cevene was charged last December 14, 2012 and is scheduled to be sentenced on April 2, 2013. If found guilty, he could have up to five years jail time, with around three years of supervised release after imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 plus $500 prosecution costs.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, Tax Evasion Tags: avoiding taxes, federal income tax, federal tax, federal tax fraud, income tax, tax crime, tax evasion, tax fraud