Going pro; uneasy easements; for he has sinned; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Miami: Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Alexandra Acosta, 38, of Tamarac, Florida, has been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the Small Business Administration, two counts of false statements to the SBA and wire fraud, all in relation to a COVID-19 relief fraud scheme.
In 2021, Acosta conspired with her tax preparer, Vilsaint St Louis, to apply for and receive a Paycheck Protection Program loan for herself as a sole proprietor doing business as a realtor. The application was based on false information about her average monthly income in 2019, including two falsified IRS forms submitted with the application. Acosta also sought and received forgiveness for the fraudulently obtained PPP loan, which totaled more than $20,000 in principal and interest.
Sentencing is Aug. 27. Acosta faces up to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud conviction, five years for the conspiracy conviction and two years for each of the false statement convictions. St Louis previously pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy and has been sentenced to a year of probation, a $5,000 fine and 100 hours of community service.
Springfield, Massachusetts: Ryan McDowell, a former golf professional who worked at two courses owned by the City of Springfield, has been sentenced to a year of probation after pleading guilty to six counts of tax fraud in 2018.
Between 2011 and 2016, McDowell worked for a golf management company that contracted with Springfield to manage its two municipal golf courses. McDowell skimmed some $101,050 from golf revenues belonging to the city and then filed returns each year that omitted the stolen money, resulting in a federal tax loss of $34,236.
He was also ordered to pay $101,050 in restitution to the City of Springfield and $34,236 to the IRS.
Atlanta: Tax preparer and CPA Herbert Lewis has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to filing a false personal return related to his participation in the promotion and sale of abusive syndicated conservation easement shelters.
Lewis was a preparer at a local accounting firm and in at least 2014 through 2019 he promoted and sold deductions to wealthy clients in illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters organized and created by co-defendants Jack Fisher, James Sinnott and others.
The scheme entailed creating partnerships that bought land and land-owning companies and then donated conservation easements over these assets. Appraisers would allegedly generate fraudulent appraisals of the easements that were frequently at least 10 times the price paid by the partnership. The partnerships claimed a charitable contribution deduction based on the inflated value of the conservation easement, resulting in a fraudulent deduction.
Lewis knew that the transactions related to these illegal shelters lacked economic substance, that his wealthy clients participated only to obtain a deduction and that his clients received only a tax benefit for their participation. In some cases, Lewis also instructed and caused his clients to falsely backdate documents. In 2019 alone, Lewis helped 15 clients claim false deductions on their returns.
He helped prepare returns that claimed nearly $14 million in false deductions based on backdated documents, causing a federal tax loss of nearly $5 million.
Lewis earned more than $1 million in commissions for promoting and selling the shelters. He also did not fully report the commissions on his personal returns and fraudulently reported commission income as income on the returns of nominee entities in his children's names.
Sentencing is Oct. 16. Lewis faces up to five years in prison for the conspiracy charge and three years for filing false returns. He also faces a period of supervised release, restitution and monetary penalties.
Eight other defendants have
Des Plaines, Illinois: Salesperson Nikko D'Ambrosio has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for overstating on personal returns the amount of his business expenses and his charitable contributions.
Following his conviction earlier this year for false statements in his personal income tax returns for 2019 and 2020, D'Ambrosio, who worked in sales for an Illinois-based electronic sweepstakes kiosk operator, falsely claimed to have driven more than 474,000 miles on business-related travel for those two years and falsely claimed to have incurred more than $263,000 in business-related meal expenses.
D'Ambrosio's phony claims about charitable contributions involved alleged donations of more than $63,000 to a Catholic church in Chicago. Records at trial revealed that the mileage and meal expenses were vastly overstated, and a church representative testified that D'Ambrosio was not a parishioner and that the church had no record of any donations by him in those years.
Minnetonka, Minnesota: Former commercial airline pilot Charles Randall Sorensen has been found guilty of tax evasion, of filing false tax returns, of failing to file returns and of making false claims.
Sorensen was a commercial airline pilot who retired in 2016. In January 2017, he filed a fraudulent return for 2015, claiming that he was entitled to a $55,365 refund. He in fact owed more than $49,000 in income taxes that year. In 2017, Sorensen filed a fraudulent return for 2016, claiming that he was entitled to a $123,370 refund when he owed more than $175,000 in taxes that year.
The IRS audited Sorensen's 2015 and 2016 returns and found that he'd received more than $150,000 in undeserved refunds and owed more than $290,000 in taxes, interest and penalties. Sorensen refused to pay his tax debt and hid his income and assets in bank accounts in the name of shell religious nonprofits and by liquidating his retirement accounts and converting the funds into cryptocurrency. He also failed to file federal income tax returns for 2017, 2018 and 2019.
He owes the U.S. more than $300,000.
Wilbraham, Massachusetts: Construction exec Jason Pecoy has been convicted for conspiring to defraud the United States.
He conspired with his father Kent Pecoy and Kevin Kennedy to conceal income from the IRS. Jason Pecoy was a project manager at Kent Pecoy and Sons Construction Inc., which was owned by Kent Pecoy. Kennedy operated two municipal golf courses and purchased two custom-built homes from Kent Pecoy's company.
The three conspired to conceal income from the IRS by dealing in cash. Jason Pecoy received at least $600,000 in cash payments from Kennedy for the purchase and construction of a custom-built home on Cape Cod. Instead of depositing most of the cash he received from Kennedy into the businesses' bank accounts, Pecoy distributed the cash directly to vendors and subcontractors. Pecoy maintained separate ledgers documenting Kennedy's cash payments, false contracts and cost estimates, and false entries in the company's accounting system.
Jason Pecoy's sentencing is Sept. 12. He faces up to five years in prison. Kent Pecoy pleaded guilty to related tax crimes on May 17 and will be sentenced on Aug. 20. Kennedy was
Charlton, New York: Bruce Bochette has pleaded guilty to evading taxes on some $825,000 in business income.
Bochette, who operates a commercial painting business, admitted that for tax years 2017 through 2021 he evaded income taxes by depositing checks and portions of checks into his personal account that were payments from his company's commercial painting clients. Bochette did not report this income to the IRS on either his company's or his personal returns and did not pay taxes on this income.
Bochette admitted to not reporting $825,719.56 in business income and to evading $219,706 in taxes.
Sentencing is Oct. 4. He faces up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a maximum $100,000 fine.
