Checking out; chairman of the hoard; unlucky Linda; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Newport News, Virginia: Preparer Angela Harper has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for preparing false returns.
Harper owned At Ease Tax Services, a tax preparation business that she operated in her home and area hotel rooms. Between 2014 and 2018, she prepared returns that claimed fraudulent credits and deductions to inflate clients’ refunds. Harper also did not sign the returns, to make it appear that they had been self-prepared by clients. She did not review the completed returns with her clients, nor did she provide copies of the returns even when the clients specifically requested them.
Harper, who pleaded guilty last year
Lake Worth, Florida: Laura Luz Maria Torres Romero, a.k.a. Antonieta Mena, a.k.a. Antonieta Vinkelried, a.k.a. Antonieta Winkelried, the lead defendant in a $4 million scheme to defraud the U.S. tax immigration and systems, has pleaded guilty.
Torres pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit immigration and mail fraud, one count of conspiracy to steal and launder government money, and one count of false statements to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food assistance program. Co-conspirator Melanie Wilhelm, of West Palm Beach, previously pleaded guilty to the two conspiracy charges.
From approximately 2012 through March 2020, Torres, with the assistance of Wilhelm and other co-conspirators, operated a multiservice business that provided immigration and other services to the public. The business operated under different names, including El Latino Multiservices, M&K Multiservices, L&L Document Services and AYE Services, from different locations in Lake Worth and West Palm Beach, Florida. Torres was the owner and controlled all aspects of the business.
Most of the clients who sought her assistance had illegally entered the U.S. years earlier and were ineligible for asylum benefits. Most of her clients were from Guatemala or Honduras, did not speak English and had little formal education and minimal knowledge of the immigration rules and procedures in the U.S. Torres would prepare false and fraudulent asylum applications for them, which she never showed them, and during the course of the scheme she collected more than $2 million in cash fees from hundreds of clients and filed approximately 1,000 false and fraudulent asylum and employment authorization applications.
Throughout the scheme, Torres and her co-conspirators obtained personal ID information, including names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers from her immigration clients. Without their knowledge or consent, she used the information to prepare false and fraudulent tax returns seeking significant refunds. The returns included one or more materially false statements, including false addresses, fictitious dependents, false Earned Income Credit claims, and false business income, expenses and deductions.
Torres and the conspirators forged clients’ names on the fraudulent federal returns and created and submitted to the IRS false and fictitious documents, including fake leases, fake child care receipts and fake business receipts.
During the first few years of the tax scheme, Torres directed the IRS to direct-deposit the fraudulent refunds into a TD Bank account that she opened using a stolen ID. Later Torres had the IRS mail the fraudulent refund checks to the “home addresses” listed on the returns — which were, in fact, properties owned or controlled by Torres. The conspirators retrieved the fraudulent refund checks, then forged the names of the clients. Torres arranged to have a co-conspirator attorney in California launder the refund checks through her attorney trust account.
The tax and money laundering scheme ran from approximately 2011 through April 2019; Torres used the ID information to file more than 200 false federal returns seeking fraudulent refunds totaling some $1.8 million.
For these and other schemes, Torres faces a maximum of 15 years in prison, Wilhelm a maximum of 10 years. Both will be sentenced in March and are also subject to supervised release, penalties and restitution.
Newark, New Jersey: A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of George Gilmore, a former partner in a law firm, on charges of failing to pay over payroll taxes to the IRS and making false statements in a loan application.
Gilmore, 71, of Toms River, New Jersey, a former equity partner and shareholder at Gilmore & Monahan PA, was convicted in 2019 on two counts of failing to pay over payroll taxes withheld from employees to the IRS and one count of making false statements on a bank loan application submitted to Ocean First Bank NA. He was sentenced Jan. 22, 2020, to one year and one day in prison.
In the non-precedential ruling written by Judge Thomas Hardiman for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the court rejected four separate claims raised by Gilmore. It agreed with the government that the trial judge properly excluded expert psychiatric testimony supporting Gilmore’s claim that a “hoarding” disorder made him spend lavishly on personal expenses rather than make timely payments to the IRS. The court also rejected Gilmore's challenges to the jury instructions and sufficiency of evidence.
Walled Lake, Michigan: Business owner Johni Semma has been sentenced to two years in prison for failure to file and pay over employment taxes.
Semma owned Bayside Sports Bar & Grill and The Coliseum, an adult entertainment business. From the first quarter of 2008 through the first quarter of 2015, Semma timely filed only two out of 29 required federal employment tax returns and failed to pay some $1.3 million in employment taxes.
In 2012, Semma sold The Coliseum for approximately $5.9 million but did not file an individual income tax return or pay taxes for that year, causing an additional tax loss of some $463,000 to the IRS.
Semma, who pleaded guilty in 2019, was also ordered to pay $1,793,771 in restitution to the IRS.
La Grande, Oregon: Anndrea D. Jacobs, a former office manager and bookkeeper for a medical practice, has been sentenced to four years in prison and five years of supervised release after previously pleading guilty to filing a false personal income tax return, falsely impersonating an IRS employee, aggravated ID theft and bank fraud.
Beginning around January 2011 and continuing until her termination in December 2015, Jacobs used her position and access to a practice’s finances to steal by, among other means, writing business checks to herself or for her own benefit. Jacobs used the stolen funds to make payments on personal credit cards and pay other personal expenses.
She prepared and maintained false business financial records, overstating expenses and estimated tax payments. Without the knowledge or consent of the medical practice owner, she also opened a business bank account in his name; deposited a business check payable to the Oregon Department of Revenue into her own personal account; gave the practice owner falsified property tax statements with total due balances of zero; and convinced the practice owner to grant her limited power of attorney to handle the practice’s pending IRS tax-collection action.
Jacobs also created an identity as an IRS taxpayer advocate named “Linda Gibson,” established a phone number and voicemail account for the fictitious identity, and purported to assist the medical practice owner with his IRS tax collection issues.
She was indicted in September 2018. Last June, her pretrial release was revoked for committing bank fraud while embezzling from a second employer, a dental practice.
Jacobs was also ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution to two former employers, Wells Fargo Bank and the IRS.
