Lulling tactics; up to 152 years in prison; big-ticket items; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Philadelphia: Gregory J. Stefan Jr., 56, of Upper Merion, Pennsylvania, entered a plea of guilty to seven counts of wire fraud and four counts of filing a false tax return.
The defendant was charged by superseding indictment in December 2024, arising from fraudulent business practices he employed in the operation and management of headstone sales companies, and his failure to report on his individual income tax returns any income he received from those companies.
Between January 2018 and September 2023, Stefan — through his businesses 1843 LLC and Colonial Memorials — defrauded hundreds of grieving customers by entering into contracts to provide custom headstone and engraving services for their deceased loved ones that he knew he would not deliver on the promised timeline, if at all.
Stefan demanded large up-front payments from his customers but routinely failed to fulfill their orders by the projected delivery date. When customers reached out to request updates on the status of their overdue orders, he either ignored them or employed lulling tactics and assured them that their orders would be delivered shortly without taking any steps to follow through on those assurances.
In all, Stefan failed to deliver, or provide refunds for, orders placed by almost 500 customers who had paid him in excess of $1.5 million. Stefan also falsely reported on his federal income tax returns that he earned no income whatsoever each year from 2018 through 2021.
As part of his federal plea agreement, Stefan accepted responsibility for similar crimes charged in 10 local cases across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, which resulted in an additional $210,000 loss to victims.
The defendant will be sentenced on a date to be determined and faces a maximum possible term of 152 years in prison.
Lanesborough, Massachusetts: The owner of a Berkshires-based construction company was ordered to pay over $200,000 in restitution in connection with an income tax fraud scheme.
Cheshire resident Dennis Condron, 76, pleaded guilty to four counts of tax fraud in federal court. A judge sentenced him to a year of probation, a $40,000 fine and to pay over $200,000 in restitution.
Condron is the owner of D Condron Construction, a Lanesborough-based construction contractor that specializes in concrete pouring, paving and excavation.
Over a three-year period, Condron hid over half a million dollars in customer checks to his company by cashing them and diverting them to his personal accounts. When he had his taxes prepared, he did not tell his preparer about the cashed checks.
As a result, Condron's tax returns underreported the money he earned through DCC, and he kept hundreds of thousands of dollars that he should have paid in federal and state income taxes.
Freeport, New York: Damaris Beltre, a former tax preparer in Freeport, New York, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. When sentenced, Beltre faces a maximum sentence of 53 years in prison, as well as restitution of approximately $12 million.
Beltre owned and operated multiple corporate entities offering tax preparation and other financial services in Freeport. From approximately January 2021 through April 2024, Beltre personally prepared, and supervised employees in the preparation of, false and fraudulent individual income tax returns, and associated schedules and forms, for her client-taxpayers, which were submitted to the IRS.
The tax returns that Beltre prepared and caused to be prepared for her clients listed false dependents and fraudulently claimed tens of millions of dollars in COVID-19-related tax credits and motor fuel income tax credits to directly reduce tax liability and provide substantial refunds to which her clients were not entitled.
Beltre's clients paid over $1 million in fees for her services preparing these false returns, which included a percentage of any tax refund issued. In April 2023, an undercover federal agent hired Beltre to prepare his individual income tax return. If prepared accurately, the agent would have owed the IRS approximately $205. By contrast, the defendant prepared an income tax return for the agent that contained false and fraudulent statements, and which thereby claimed a refund of over $14,243. Beltre charged the agent $2,200 in fees to prepare and submit the fraudulent tax return. As a result of this years-long scheme, the IRS improperly issued nearly $11 million in tax refunds to the defendant's clients, and failed to collect several million dollars as a result of fraudulently reduced tax liabilities.
Wilmington, North Carolina: A Robeson County woman has pleaded guilty in connection with a large-scale fraud scheme that resulted in nearly $14 million in fraudulent pandemic-related tax refunds being paid out by the IRS.
Nejlai Mitchell, 48, owner of a tax preparation business with locations in Lumberton and Hope Mills, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to prepare false tax returns and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns.
Mitchell and seven employees filed fraudulent tax returns between April 2022 and May 2023, claiming COVID-19-related tax credits that clients were not entitled to receive. The false returns led the IRS to issue approximately $13.9 million in fraudulent refunds.
Mitchell faces up to eight years in federal prison and a fine of up to $500,000 when she is sentenced later this year. She will also be required to forfeit nearly $13.9 million.
Seven other tax preparers involved in the scheme have already pleaded guilty.
Washington, D.C.: A Honduran national was sentenced to eight years in prison for bilking the U.S. government out of nearly $40 million in a payroll tax fraud scheme that helped other undocumented citizens find work in America.
Mario Flores conspired with his girlfriend and others to set up shell companies in Orlando, Florida, that operated unlicensed cash courier and check cashing services for construction contractors and subcontractors.
The off-the-books payroll services allowed Flores and his co-conspirators to charge a percentage fee while cashing $89 million in checks for clients between 2015 and 2022.
The contractors and subcontractors then paid the cash directly to employees — without withholding and paying required payroll taxes to the IRS and allowing them to skirt laws against hiring illegal immigrants.
Flores' girlfriend, Iris Villafranca, was sentenced to 17 years in prison in April and ordered to pay more than $38 million in restitution for the scheme.
Two co-conspirators — Osman Zapata and Francisco Alvarez — were sentenced to four years in prison and four years of probation, respectively, and ordered to pay nearly $5 million in total restitution.
For his part, Flores admitted to being responsible for at least $9.4 million kept from the IRS.
Flores pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and one count of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Seattle: A former real estate professional who operated a real estate investment fund was sentenced to 55 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering and tax fraud.
Tamara King, a.k.a. Tamara Waln, 56, of Toledo, Ohio, previously resided in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington. King was convicted in December 2025.
Between August 2009 and December 2013, King's now ex-husband and co-conspirator Paul Waln, 60, solicited investments in a real estate fund called Halcyon. Twenty-two victims, most of whom were Seattle residents, invested $2.25 million in the fund. Waln told investors their funds would be pooled to purchase and renovate an apartment building in West Seattle and then used for other real estate projects. Investors were required to leave their money in the investment pool for 10 years. Waln said that at the end of the 10-year period, he would return the investment principal and earnings, which he estimated amounted to a 20% annual return. Waln was entitled to receive a 1% fee for managing the investment fund.
In 2013, Waln married King, who was also a real estate agent. Waln and King then jointly managed the investment fund. Between February 2014 and December 2018, they conspired to misappropriate money from the fund to pay their personal expenses. The pair secretly transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from the fund to their management company and then transferred the money to King's personal accounts. Much of that money went to purchase big-ticket luxury items, and she purchased nearly all of those big-ticket items for herself, not Waln.
Waln and King were required to distribute the investment funds to investors in 2019. But in October 2019, King informed the investors that all the money was gone, and the investment had failed. All the remaining investors lost their entire investments.
Victims of the fraud described to the court how King's theft impacted their lives: forcing them to delay retirements, to stress over the cost of care for disabled spouses and to feel ashamed that they had been deceived.
King also failed to report over $1.6 million in income over three tax years. For those three tax years, King reported $188,116 in total income, when she actually received $1.85 million. The tax loss to the U.S. is $551,758.
The jury convicted King of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering and three counts of filing a false tax return.
Waln, now of Dallas, pleaded guilty to the wire fraud conspiracy in June 2025 and was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
King will be on three years of supervised release following her 92-month prison term. A hearing is scheduled for July 24, to determine restitution and forfeiture of assets.
