Startup shut down; healthy, wealthy and crooked; won't ever stand the strain; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Greenville, Mississippi: Tax preparer Slexcia Neal has been sentenced to 18 months in prison on each count of conviction after pleading guilty to three counts of filing fraudulent federal returns.
Neal owned a tax prep business in Cleveland and Merigold, Mississippi, where taxpayers sought her help preparing and filing documents with the IRS. When Neal submitted a number of these documents, they contained false information that lowered taxpayers' income and ultimately increased federal refunds.
She was also ordered to serve a year of supervised probation and to pay more than $1.96 million in restitution to the IRS. Neal was also barred for life from preparing tax documents for others.
Bedford, New Hampshire: Exec Andrew Park, 49, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for willfully failing to pay more than $14 million in payroll taxes and not filing personal returns.
Park, who
From the company's founding in 2014 through the third quarter of 2021, he withheld federal taxes from the wages of the company's employees but did not pay them over as required by law. He also did not pay over the portion of the employment taxes that the company owed.
Park failed to do so even though a payroll service company he'd hired notified him that the taxes were due; in more than one instance, he was also notified by an employee that the amount paid to Social Security listed on a W-2 did not match what was reported by the Social Security Administration.
From 2013 through 2020, Park also did not file individual returns despite paying himself a salary of some $250,000 each year.
Park caused a tax loss to the IRS exceeding $14 million.
He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $639,821.78 in restitution to the U.S. and a fine of $15,000.
Owings Mills, Maryland: James Wilson has been convicted of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, money laundering, filing false returns and ID theft.
Wilson conspired to defraud insurance companies by obtaining more than 30 life insurance policies for applicants by misrepresenting their health, wealth and existing coverage. The total death benefits from these policies exceeded $20 million. He also conspired to defraud individual investors to obtain funds that he then used to pay premiums on fraudulently obtained policies.
Wilson filed false individual income tax returns for 2018 and 2019, which concealed some $7.7 million in fraud proceeds.
Sentencing is May 1. He faces up to 20 years in prison for each count of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, and a maximum of three years in prison for each count of filing a false return. Wilson also faces up to two years in prison for each count of aggravated ID theft.
Lafayette, New York: David Gedamoske has pleaded guilty to evading taxes on more than $1 million in wages between 2016 and 2021.
Gedamoske worked as a journeyman lineman for various electrical companies and received wages reported on a W-2. When he started working at these companies, Gedamoske completed a W-4 and claimed either "99 Allowances" or that he was exempt from income tax. Despite owing a significant amount of tax, he then failed to file a federal return between 2016 and 2021, evading more than $200,000 in federal taxes.
Sentencing is June 11. Gedamoske faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a maximum $100,000 fine. He will also have to pay restitution to the IRS.
Appleton, Wisconsin: KBWB Operations LLC, d.b.a. Atrium Health and Senior Living, and former CEO and managing member Kevin Breslin, of Hoboken, New Jersey, have both pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud and one count of tax conspiracy.
Breslin is one of six owners of KBWB-Atrium, which had corporate headquarters in Little Falls, New Jersey, and a corporate office in Appleton. From approximately January 2015 to about September 2018, KBWB-Atrium operated and owned 23 skilled nursing facilities in Wisconsin; Breslin was responsible for overseeing all of KBWB-Atrium's operations.
The primary source of income for the KBWB-Atrium Wisconsin was federal funds from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS. The fraud involved diverting CMS funds, and the defendants allegedly prioritized distributions and guaranteed payments to KBWB-Atrium's owners regardless of the company's financial situation. As a part of the conspiracy alleged, Breslin, on behalf of KBWB-Atrium, directed that income taxes and employment taxes withheld from employees' paychecks not be paid over to the IRS.
Sentencing is May 7. Breslin faces up to 10 years in prison for the health care fraud count and five years for the conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, along with a period of supervised release. Both defendants face restitution and other monetary penalties.
Fairmont, West Virginia: Tax preparer Jack Lee Oliver, 56, of Rivesville, West Virginia, has been sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding the IRS of $708,538.
Oliver, who was
Oliver also claimed the foster son of one of his clients on his returns, resulting in thousands of dollars in undeserved refundable credits.
Oliver will serve a year of supervised release following his prison sentence. He was also ordered to cooperate with the IRS to pay back taxes.
Miami: Two Ukrainian nationals who were extradited from the Kingdom of Thailand to the United States in September have been sentenced on charges related to labor-staffing companies they operated in Florida.
Oleg Oliynyk and Oleksandr Yurchyk were each sentenced to 15 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
They and others owned and operated a series of labor-staffing companies in South Florida from at least April 2008 to August 2021. Through these companies, Oliynyk, Yurchyk and co-defendants
Oliynyk and Yurchyk were each also ordered to serve three years of supervised release, to pay $10,863,233.05 in restitution to the U.S. and to forfeit $11 million.
Holly Springs, Mississippi: Tax preparer Lakisha Pearson, 48, has been sentenced to 52 months in jail for mail fraud in connection with falsely claiming Employee Retention Credits.
Pearson, who owns Unity Tax Express, pleaded guilty to using the internet to file false tax credit claims for numerous persons, totaling nearly $47 million and taking kickbacks from those persons. The IRS sent $15,942,586.77 in ERC credits to the claimants who thought they were given a government grant and were unaware that Pearson had filed returns for them.
Pearson was also ordered to pay the above amount in restitution.
