GI series; On the eve of redemption; telecom con; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Burlington, North Carolina: A Burlington woman has been sentenced to 25 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping clients file false tax returns.
Tracey Hernandez, 39, pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and assisting in the filing of a false tax return on Sept. 5, 2025.
Hernandez prepared and filed more than 200 false Forms 1040 for clients for tax years 2021 and 2022. Hernandez operated as a "ghost preparer," meaning she did not sign her name on the returns she filed on behalf of clients.
The false returns included fraudulent education expenses, refundable education credits, fraudulent Schedule C forms and credits for sick and family leave for self-employed individuals.
In addition to her prison sentence, she has been ordered to serve one year of supervised release and pay $2,106,281 in restitution.
Clarksburg, West Virginia: A Wheeling, West Virginia, physician was sentenced for tax fraud that totaled nearly $2.5 million, and for attempting to obstruct the investigation.
Nitesh Ratnakar, age 50, owned and operated a gastroenterology practice and a medical equipment manufacturer in Elkins, West Virginia. He withheld payroll taxes from his employees' paychecks and failed to make $2,419,560 in required payments to the IRS. Ratnakar also filed false tax returns in 2020, 2021 and 2022. When he was under investigation for these crimes, he caused false documents to be provided in response to a federal grand jury subpoena.
Ratnakar was sentenced to 41 months in prison for 41 counts of tax fraud and one count of obstructing a federal grand jury investigation. He will serve one year of supervised release following his prison sentence.
Las Vegas: A Henderson man pleaded guilty in a federal court case involving tax shelters that hid taxable income from the IRS.
Carl Dimailig conspired with two other promoters to market and implement an "abusive trust tax shelter" from 2018 to 2025, according to court documents cited by the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit. He entered the guilty plea on March 10.
In all, Dimailig prepared and filed about 120 false tax returns that concealed more than $34 million in client income and $400,000 of his own income. The returns were prepared for 35 clients, according to the IRS.
Investigators built a case that showed Dimailig and his co-conspirators helped clients restructure their businesses so that 98% of business income "flowed through layered sham trusts and a fake 'private family foundation.'"
The clients still had full control of the money and could spend whatever they wanted.
Putting his own money into the tax shelters allowed Dimailig to evade $127,646 in personal income taxes from 2019 through 2023.
The scam caused more than $9.6 million in lost federal revenue.
The IRS also reported that Aanand Shukla of Jonestown, Texas, pleaded guilty in a separate case involving fraudulent tax shelters. Shukla was doing similar work for clients, but charging them big fees. At least one client was charged $225,000.
Shukla contributed to the filing of at least 321 false tax returns, which concealed more than $27 million in client income and $3.7 million of his own income. His crimes caused more than $8.7 million in losses to the United States.
Defendants in both cases face a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiring to defraud the United States.
Dimailig will be sentenced on September 10.
Sacramento, California: Christopher Eugene Guilford, 54, formerly of Sacramento, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison for making a false claim against the United States and filing false tax returns.
Guilford had filed nine false tax returns with the IRS in which he reported false income and false tax withholdings. For one of the tax return filings, Guilford received a refund of $1,172,446. The charges against Guilford stem from his use of a convoluted "redemption" scheme, used by tax protestors and sovereign citizens that has been repeatedly rejected by the courts.
Baltimore County, Maryland: Brett Hill, of Parkton and Berlin, has been convicted on 16 counts of willful failure to collect and pay over employment taxes in April 2025. He had held a leadership role in two separate telecommunications companies.
The case dates back to 2016, when — through the fourth quarter of 2018 — Hill withheld federal income and Social Security and Medicare taxes from his employees' paychecks but failed to turn over the funds. He also failed to file quarterly employment tax returns.
An investigation by the IRS determined that Hill pocketed over $2 million.
Hill has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay over $650,000 in restitution to the federal government.
