Difficult and complex; $4,000 tax on $2 million; little horse sense; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Boston: Jennifer Beth True, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, a former employee of the IRS service center in Andover, Massachusetts, has pleaded guilty regarding the filing of at least 70 false returns for herself and others.
True was employed by the IRS for more than 22 years. As a lead contact representative, she helped team members respond to difficult and complex taxpayer inquiries. She was trained in tax law, ethics, information protection and disclosure, privacy and ID theft and protection.
True e-filed more than 500 returns for herself and others between 2012 and 2018. She admitted that she prepared or assisted in preparing and filing at least 70 returns for herself and others that contained false IRS deductions, false medical expenses, false and inflated unreimbursed business expenses and false tax prep fees. Some returns also included false child and dependent care credits.
Sentencing is Jan. 6.
Cleveland: Former professional baseball player Trevor Crowe, 36, has agreed to pay $85,043 in restitution for lying on his taxes to hide money he made from a gambling business, news outlets said.
Crowe pleaded guilty to filing a false return for 2015, reports said, adding that sentencing is Dec. 22. The charge carries a maximum of three years in prison but Crowe is reportedly likely to receive a lenient sentence because of his cooperation and lack of a criminal past.
Reports said he cooperated with authorities about his role in the gambling business of Clinton Reider, a local resident whose bookmaking operation used offshore websites to control and track bets received in the bookmaking ring, according to documents reportedly filed by federal prosecutors.
Crowe and others were Reider’s customers and also operated as sub-agents for Reider, according to cited court records. In 2014, Crowe sold Reider a 2010 Porsche for $27,919 to reduce a debt that Crowe owed Reider, according to cited records.
Crowe played for the Cleveland Indians from 2009 through 2011 and for the Houston Astros in 2013, reports said.
Garland, Texas: Two owners of a chiropractic clinic have been sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to repay some $350,000 for tax fraud.
Tammy Boulyaphonh, 51, was convicted in February. Her husband, Khamlor Boulyaphonh, 59, pleaded guilty to similar counts.
The Boulyaphonhs owned and operated chiropractic clinics in Dallas-Fort Worth that provided medical care principally to patients injured in motor vehicle accidents. Most of the couple’s business income was derived from payments received from insurance companies and payments from attorneys who had received insurance settlement payments on behalf of their patients. Ms. Boulyaphonh directed multiple personal injury attorneys to make checks out to her and her husband personally, then diverted the attorney payments to the couple’s personal bank accounts. The couple concealed the diverted income from their preparer and provided him with false documents.
The couple paid less than $4,000 total tax on gross receipts of more than $2 million while owning two homes, two luxury vehicles, $1 million life insurance policies and luxury goods.
Between 2010 and 2013, the couple concealed more than $1.2 million in business income from the IRS.
Camden, New Jersey: Medical-transport exec Rodney Bush-Rowland, 41, has admitted filing returns that failed to report all his business income.
Bush-Rowland, sole owner of To & Fro Transportation, which provided medical-transportation services, admitted that during 2014 and 2015 he used a commercial check casher to negotiate more than $2.7 million of To & Fro’s revenue checks. He also admitted that he failed to include a large portion of the cashed checks on To & Fro’s corporate returns and that he substantially underreported the company’s income on his own income tax returns, causing a tax loss of more than $25,000.
During 2014, 2015 and 2016, Bush-Rowland also filed quarterly employment returns that falsely reported that To & Fro paid all of the employment taxes due and owing for its employees; he actually failed to pay over more than $147,000 of employment taxes during these three years.
The charge carries a maximum of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is Dec. 16.
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands: Violet Anne Golden, former chair of the Virgin Islands Casino Control Commission, has been sentenced to two years in prison following an earlier guilty plea to theft of government funds and failing to file an income tax return.
Golden admitted to diverting nearly $300,000 in commission funds for her own benefit and the benefit of others through bank wires, writing commission checks and using commission credit cards. She also failed to timely file an income tax return despite earning an annual salary of $105,000.
Golden was also ordered to pay restitution.
Robeson Township, Pennsylvania: Preparer Linda Morgandale, 62, has been sentenced to six months of house arrest for conspiring to defraud the federal government of nearly $600,000 in tax revenue, according to published reports.
Morgandale was also ordered to serve 4-½ years of probation after the home confinement and to pay $598,511 in restitution to the IRS, and was precluded from working in prep for five years, reports said.
She reportedly pleaded guilty in February to falsifying tax deductions for 27 clients from 2014 to 2015 to allow her clients to fraudulently receive tax refunds. She was paid $150 to $200 per return, according to cited court records.
Prosecutors reportedly said Morgandale wrote “self prepared” on the returns rather than including her personal ID number, and in 2014 hired another preparer who is now also charged with filing false deductions for 27 clients.
Hackensack, New Jersey: Peter Jamgochian, of Paramus, New Jersey, co-owner of a commercial cleaning company, has admitted evading more than $300,000 in tax payments by cashing checks at a commercial check cashier, paying employees off-the-books cash and failing to report all his income.
In 2013 and 2014, Jamgochian cashed more than $2 million in checks from the company’s customers at a commercial check cashier. He then used the cash to pay off-the-books cash wages to his employees and kept a portion for himself. Jamgochian hid these cashed checks from the IRS by not disclosing this information to the company’s accountant. After the accountant prepared the corporate taxes, Jamgochian signed these false corporate returns.
He caused the company to underpay $248,936 in Medicare and Social Security taxes and understated his personal income received from the company, causing an additional federal tax loss of $76,201.
Subscribing to a false return carries a maximum of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is Dec. 16.
Sacramento, California: Veterinarian Jack Ray Snyder, 63, of Truckee, California, has pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion.
Snyder failed to report significant income for tax years 2011 through 2014. Each year, he underreported his income to his preparer and took illegitimate deductions. For the 2011 tax year, Snyder also earned income as an equine veterinarian in addition to his salary as a professor at the University of California Davis.
He endorsed outside client payment checks to directly pay credit card bills and failed to report $212,953 in income for the 2011 tax year. According to the plea agreement, the additional tax due for 2011 through 2014 was $134,497.
Sentencing is Nov. 16. Snyder faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
