Just print n’ pay; all hair stylists are alike; risky business; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Kinston, North Carolina: Former tax preparer Hildares Kinkesha Parker-Greene has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for conspiring to file false returns.
In early 2016, Parker-Greene managed a tax prep business in Kinston, where she conspired with another preparer to fraudulently inflate clients’ refunds by claiming false wages, federal income tax withholdings and dependents. Parker-Greene printed client refund checks, directed clients to cash the checks and pay her additional cash fees. Between 2017 and 2018, Parker-Greene also operated a tax prep business out of her home and continued to prepare false returns for clients.
The false returns prepared by Parker-Greene and her conspirator sought to defraud the IRS of more than $550,000.
Parker-Greene was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $442,576 in restitution to the IRS.
Sacramento, California: Former IRS employee Angela Milton has pleaded guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false returns.
Milton was an IRS tax examining technician in Fresno between 2010 and 2013. During that time, she helped prepare and file numerous fraudulent returns in the names of others to inflate federal refunds. In some cases, Milton received a fee and in others took a portion of the refund without the knowledge of the taxpayer.
She tried to defraud the IRS of more than $170,000; the actual loss was some $101,475.
Sentencing is Sept. 3. Milton faces a maximum of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, as well as restitution to the IRS.
Hammond, Indiana: Tax preparer Dorian Hall, 46, of Gary, Indiana, has admitted for the second time in five years to cheating the IRS, according to news reports.
Reports added that he pleaded guilty to preparing and filing false returns and is giving up his right to make the government prove his guilt in return for a more lenient sentence than the three-year maximum he might have faced if he had been found guilty by a jury. Hall is also reportedly promising to pay the government $1 million in restitution, the estimated unpaid federal income taxes and illegal refunds he generated for hundreds of his business clients.
Reports termed it “the latest twist” in a nearly decade-long investigation of hundreds of fraudulent returns the IRS traced to Hall, whose business cards once proclaimed him “Taxman 007.”
Cited court documents state that Hall used commercial tax prep software to calculate the type and amount of income that resulted in refunds without taxes owed. The returns raised the suspicions of government investigators because they all involved people claiming to be professional household helpers, reports said, including the coincidence of 17 area “hair stylists” each earning exactly $15,489.
Hall never signed those returns as the preparer and all refunds ended up in his bank account, reports said, adding that Hall pleaded guilty to tax evasion and identity theft in 2016 and assured the IRS that he’d gotten out of tax prep and moved into the music business. Instead, news outlets said, he changed his email address, opened new bank accounts and generated more phony returns from 2014 to 2016, when he went to prison.
His new guilty plea admits that those hundreds of returns contained false income amounts from undocumented gig work and false education credits, reports added.
New York: Tax preparer Rafael Alvarez and his company ATAX New York LLC have been permanently barred from preparing federal returns for others.
The U.S. alleged that Alvarez and ATAX New York had prepared and filed fraudulent returns on which they falsely reduced clients’ tax liabilities and generated undeserved refunds. According to the complaint, ATAX New York filed more than 36,000 returns on behalf of its clients from 2016 to 2019.
After the government filed its complaint, Alvarez and ATAX New York consented to the entry of a permanent injunction and admitted, among other things, that between 2016 and 2019 they prepared and filed many federal income tax returns including claims of expenses, losses or head of household status that lacked adequate supporting information or documentation.
The complaint also asked for disgorgement of the net profits that Alvarez and ATAX New York earned for preparing phony federal returns. Alvarez and ATAX New York agreed to pay $159,600 in disgorgement to the United States.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Risk consultant Charles Agee Atkins has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud and illegal possession of a firearm.
Atkins operated several risk consulting businesses and from 2011 through 2017 underreported income from these businesses on his tax returns, causing a tax loss of more than $380,000 to the IRS. He also admitted that he failed to pay more than $420,000 in taxes he owed to the IRS for several prior years. In total Atkins, who was also convicted of tax fraud in 1988, caused a federal tax loss in the recent case of more than $800,000 to the IRS.
He also pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm after a 2019 search of his residence turned up a shotgun.
He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to pay some $809,115 in restitution to the United States.
Lake Mary, Florida: Former tax collector Joel Micah Greenberg, 36, has pleaded guilty to six federal offenses: sex trafficking of a child, illegally producing a false identification document, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, stalking and conspiracy.
Greenberg paid for commercial sex, including with an individual who was a minor for part of the time when Greenberg paid her to engage in those acts. When arrested in June 2020, Greenberg had two fake drivers licenses in his wallet; he’d used his position as a local county tax collector to facilitate production of those fake licenses.
He also used his position to embezzle more than $400,000, with which he bought cryptocurrency, operated a business that sold cryptocurrency mining machines, mined cryptocurrency and bought such items as autographed sports memorabilia.
Greenberg also harassed a local political opponent by mailing false letters to the school where the employee worked, claiming to be an anonymous “very concerned student” who knew the school employee had engaged in sexual misconduct with a student.
After his arrest last year, Greenberg conspired with an employee of the Small Business Administration and another individual to submit false claims for Economic Injury Disaster Loans. Greenberg and the SBA employee submitted applications for two of Greenberg’s businesses, falsely claiming the businesses were operating prior to February 2020; they also conspired to apply for a third loan in Greenberg’s name. Greenberg received more than $430,000, some of which he paid to conspirators.
Greenberg faces maximums of 20 years for wire fraud, 15 years for illegally producing a false ID document, 15 years for conspiracy and five years for stalking. He also faces minimum sentences of imprisonment of 10 years to life for sex trafficking of a child, and of two years for aggravated ID theft.
Troy, Illinois: Businessman Gary Hunsche has entered a guilty plea on a charge that he failed to pay millions in payroll taxes.
From 2014 to 2016, Hunsche, while owner-operator of a staffing company, withheld more than $8 million in federal taxes from the paychecks of some 4,000 employees. But rather than paying the full amount to the IRS, he kept more than $4 million for himself.
He used some of the money on his own residence, including landscaping work, a barn with a full-size indoor basketball court and work on a new home.
Sentencing is Aug. 17. He faces up to five years in prison.
