Illicit income; fly like an eagle; subcontractor swindle; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Denver: A restaurateur who ran eateries in two states pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government out of millions of dollars and not paying hundreds of thousands more in taxes.
Jared Leonard, 45, appeared to be a successful businessman and pillar of the community. He and his wife, Amanda, ran AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q, a Michelin-recommended establishment in Denver.
They also owned and operated six other restaurants across Denver and Chicago, as well as an umbrella company called SS Collective, through which those businesses were managed.
But cracks in Leonard's empire began to show around early 2025 after Leonard moved with his wife to Punta De Mito, Mexico.
On Facebook, Leonard claimed he was "living a simple life in Mexico" and announced that he was launching a health & wellness retreat called Sol y Sal.
The announcement was short-lived, however, as he was brought back to the U.S. a week later for prosecution.
Leonard's move south of the border came off as suspicious, as in February 2025, all four of his Denver restaurants shut down.
Every employee at AJ's Pit Bar-B-Q had quit on the last day of the month. They accused the Leonards of pocketing their paycheck withholdings that were meant for the IRS and never issuing W-2s.
Amanda Leonard, his wife, has not been accused of any crimes.
Between May and September of 2020, Leonard applied for at least nine COVID relief loans and received a minimum of $149,900 for each one.
After the money entered the business accounts of his various restaurants, he quickly transferred them to his personal bank account.
In June 2020, he made a $1.2 million cash purchase of a luxurious, five-bedroom house in Evergreen, Colorado, using the funds he received from the government.
The initial indictment included seven counts of various charges, including bank fraud and wire fraud, on top of the fraudulent federal loan charges.
Leonard will have to pay a total of $2.7 million to the government to cover the $2.3 million he stole from COVID relief programs and $434,000 that he owed in taxes.
He will face a conviction of 37 to 46 months in prison at an upcoming sentencing hearing,
Eagle, Idaho: Miles Elletson, 55, was sentenced to 52 months — just over four years — in prison for wire fraud and filing false tax returns.
The Eagle man "knowingly and fraudulently" participated in a multiyear fraud and tax scheme between June 2017 and December 2020. Elletson defrauded a business out of approximately $478,013 and willfully filed false federal tax returns, resulting in a tax loss of $161,354.
Elletson falsified work orders and submitted fraudulent invoices claiming that Advanced Purchasing Services LLC had performed work for that same business, despite knowing the work had never been done. Those invoices led the business to issue checks to the company. In many cases, Elletson himself signed the checks on behalf of the business.
In addition to the fraud, Elletson failed to report the illicit income on his federal tax returns from 2017 through 2020. As part of his sentence, he was ordered to repay $161,354 in restitution to the IRS.
Elletson was also ordered to serve two years of supervised release following his prison term.
Stoneham, Massachusetts: Christopher and Joseph Ponzo — ex-Stoneham police officers — were convicted of defrauding a company to obtain tens of millions of dollars of Mass Save funds through paying bribes and kickbacks to company employees.
Mass Save is a state-mandated program that's funded by surcharges on utility bills and supports energy-conservation programs and initiatives in Massachusetts.
The brothers paid tens of thousands of dollars in cash bribes, kickbacks and other in-kind benefits — including a John Deere tractor, a computer, home bathroom fixtures and free electrical work — to a company's employees in exchange for the employees' help in getting the brothers millions of dollars in Mass Save contracts.
Christopher owned CAP Electric, a business specializing in energy-conservation work. In 2013, he began bribing people at CLEAResult, a firm that picked and oversaw contractors on Mass Save projects.
He later pulled Joseph into the scheme, with Christopher and CLEAResult employee Eric Darlington helping Joseph set up an air-sealing shell company called Air Tight Solutions, LLC as a Mass Save contractor.
To cover his share of the payola, Joseph sent money from Air Tight to Christopher and CAP Electric and labeled it "subcontractor" business expenses. Christopher then bought off CLEAResult employees.
All told, CAP Electric took in about $36 million from CLEAResult, and Air Tight received about $7.4 million.
The Ponzo brothers pleaded guilty to felonies arising from the bribery kickback scheme, and were sentenced to 27 months in federal prison. Christopher was also ordered to forfeit $13.2 million, and Joseph to forfeit $3.6 million.
Quincy, Illinois: I Wayan Edi Adnyana, 40, pleaded guilty to two counts of personal income tax fraud for failing to report income for 2020 and 2021.
Adnyana was originally charged in 2024 following an investigation by the Illinois Department of Revenue into allegations while he was a manager at the Fuji Steakhouse in Quincy.
The initial charges included theft by failing to report over $1 million in sales, sales tax evasion of over $100,000, filing a fraudulent sales tax report and possession of "zapper," a device used to eliminate sales records from official reports.
The Quincy man was given two years of probation.
Las Vegas: Candies Goode-McCoy, formerly of Las Vegas, conspired with others to file tax returns seeking fraudulent refunds based on the Employee Retention Credit and the Paid Sick and Family Leave Credit. From approximately June 2022 through September 2023, she filed more than 1,200 tax returns for her own businesses and those of others, which falsely claimed these credits and sought refunds totaling more than $98 million.
In total, the IRS paid out approximately $33 million as a result of the scheme. Personally, Goode-McCoy received over $1.3 million in fraudulent refunds. She also received approximately $800,000 from clients for filing fraudulent returns. She used the proceeds to pay for vacations, luxury cars and other luxury goods, and to gamble at casinos.
Goode-McCoy pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims. In addition to the term of imprisonment, She was ordered to pay the IRS $26,022,188 in restitution.
Newark, New Jersey: Leon Haynes, 52, of Teaneck, was convicted of 15 counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false tax returns, one count of mail fraud and two counts of tax evasion. This is the largest COVID-19 tax relief fraud case to be tried to date in the country.
From November 2020 to May 2023, Haynes orchestrated a massive, multimillion-dollar scam to exploit those COVID-related tax credits for his own greed. As a tax preparer, Haynes prepared and submitted, and worked with others to prepare and submit, more than 1,900 false employment tax returns to the IRS claiming COVID-related tax credits on behalf of himself and his clients. Each of these tax forms contained a number of false statements.
Haynes and his co-conspirators fraudulently sought more than $170 million in tax refunds on behalf of his own businesses and his clients, and successfully caused the government to pay out over $55 million in refunds.
Throughout the scheme Haynes also charged clients a percentage of the refund checks as his fee and requested cash payments. He failed to report the money he received from his clients, thereby evading his own taxes.
Haynes was sentenced to 144 months in prison and five years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay more than $55 million in restitution to the IRS.
