Ten for the pen: The IRS’s top tax crooks

February 8, 2022 9:00 AM

Tax evasion, Ponzi schemes, COVID fraud, cybercrime: Talk about a banner year.

The IRS Criminal Investigation division’s top 10 cases for calendar year 2021 comprise the agency’s most prominent and high-profile investigations of the past 12 months.

“The investigative work of 2021 has all the makings of a made-for-TV movie — embezzlement of funds from a nonprofit, a family fraud ring that stole millions in COVID-relief funds and a $1 billion Ponzi scheme used to buy sports teams and luxury vehicles,” said IRS-CI chief Jim Lee.

Cue the countdown:

10. A special kind of scum

Albuquerque, New Mexico, couple Susan and William Harris were sentenced to 47 and 15 years in prison, respectively, after “siphoning” funds from Ayudando Guardians Inc., a nonprofit that provided guardianship, conservatorship and financial management to people with special needs. The loot went to the Harrises’ homes, vehicles, luxury RVs, cruises, a private box at the UNM arena and millions in charge card bills racked up by the happy couple and their families.

9. Blissfully unaware

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John Piccarreto Jr., of Rochester, New York, was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $19,842,613.66 in restitution after being convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and filing a false return. “Initially unaware” that he was involved in a Ponzi scheme, Piccarreto nevertheless spent at least a year and a half helping rip-off some 400 investors for about $18 million. During the scheme, which involved selling bogus promissory notes, he once claimed a taxable annual income of just $6,576 after, in fact, raking in more than half a mil.

8. Sister act

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Orlando sisters Petra Gomez and Jakeline Lumucso were sentenced to a combined dozen years in prison after ripping off the IRS for $25 million. The conspirators operated a tax prep business with five locations in central Florida and filed more than 16,000 false federal returns for clients from 2012 to 2016. In some instances, they opened the companies in the names of other people to conceal the fraud and, as is typical of these cases, Gomez also failed to declare more than $800,000 in income on her own 2014 return.

7. Bear market

A chart of bitcoin prices against Japanese yen is displayed on a computer monitor via software for trading virtual currencies in Tokyo.

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Russian bank founder Oleg Tinkov, a.k.a. Oleg Tinkoff, was ordered to pay nine digits in taxes and sentenced to time served and a year of supervised release. The sentence came after he renounced U.S. citizenship to conceal huge, reportable stock gains when his company went public. Prior to sentencing, Tinkov also forked over $508,936,184 in taxes, interest, a penalty and a fine. (That rounds up to 39 billion rubles, if you were wondering.)

6. He bit the bait

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Hugo Sergio Mejia, of Ontario, California, was sentenced to three years in prison and required to forfeit all assets from exchanging at least $13 million in Bitcoin and cash, and vice versa, often for drug traffickers. The clever perp charged commissions for the transactions and established separate companies to mask his true activity — until nailed by an undercover operation over five Bitcoin-to-cash transactions that combined were worth more than a quarter million dollars.

5. The name said it all

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Bulgarian national Rossen G. Iossifov was sentenced to 121 months in prison for participating in a multimillion-dollar scheme where popular online auction and sales websites falsely advertised high-cost goods (typically vehicles) that didn’t exist. Once victims sent payment, U.S.-based associates converted the money to cryptocurrency and transferred it to foreign-based money launderers. At least five of Iossifov’s principal clients in Bulgaria were Romanian scammers who belonged to a criminal enterprise known to authorities as the “Alexandria Online Auction Fraud Network.”

4. Fleecing the flock

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Kent R.E. Whitney, the ex-pastor of the Church of the Healthy Self, was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $22.66 million in restitution to victims after defrauding investors of $33 million by orchestrating a church-based investment scam. At his direction, church representatives appeared on television and at live seminars with false claims to lure investors to invest in church entities. Victims sent more than $33 million to the church and received fabricated monthly statements reassuring them that their funds had been invested when, in reality, little to no money ever was.

3. Insult to injury

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Joel Jerome Tucker of Prairie Village, Kansas, was sentenced to 150 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution after peddling bogus info to payday loan businesses and not filing federal tax returns for many years. Among his enterprises, Tucker swiped customer ID info, trafficked in phony debt portfolios and cashed in on pandemic relief. “He spent lavishly on jet travel and luxury cars but hasn’t voluntarily paid a dime in taxes owed for more than a decade,” authorities noted. “Adding insult to injury, he even fraudulently obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan.”

2. Sunset on a scam

Jeff Carpoff, owner of Benicia, California-based DC Solar, was sentenced to 30 years in prison and forfeited $120 million in the wake of a Ponzi scheme that involved the sale of thousands of mobile solar generator units that did not exist. He committed account and lease revenue fraud and purchased a sports team, luxury vehicles, real estate and a NASCAR team with the money. To his credit (sort of), authorities called it the largest criminal fraud scheme in the history of the Eastern District of California.

1. The shady bunch

The Ayvazyan family of San Fernando Valley, California, received sentences from 17.5 years in prison to 10 months of probation for crimes ranging from bank and wire fraud to aggravated ID theft. They used stolen and fictitious identities to submit 150 bogus applications for COVID-relief funds based on phony payroll records and tax documents, then used the money to buy luxury homes, gold coins, jewelry designer handbags and more. Richard Ayvazyan and his wife Terabelian also cut off their ankle monitors and bolted before sentencing; they are still fugitives.