Don't Mess With Taxes

Much attention on federal agencies this year has been on ways to prevent fraud and save Uncle Sam money, with mixed results.

But such efforts have always have been a focus of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

This week, IRS-CI and the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the judicial payoff from one case that cost the U.S. Treasury more than $3 million.

Fake claims on false tax returns: Diandre Mentor of Miami pleaded guilty before a Florida magistrate to conspiring to defraud the United States by filing false tax returns for clients.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Mentor admitted to helping run a years-long false return filing operation that involved a dozen tax preparation franchise offices across Florida.

Investigators found that Mentor and co-conspirators made up fake deductions, such as business expenses or charitable donations, in order to claim bigger refunds for clients from 2017 to 2019.

Such illegal filing tactics are a well-known and long-used. They regularly make the IRS’ annual Dirty Dozen tax scam list, along with warnings to be on the lookout for unscrupulous tax preparers. This case offered a real-life convergence.

Training more on tax cheating tactics: But wait, there’s more.

Federal officials said that Mentor, along with others whose cases are still pending, also conducted training sessions across the company's Florida offices to expand the fraudulent return filing operation.

And yes, the coincidence of teaching tax scheme surrogates and Mentor’s surname is almost too perfect.

Then in 2020, after leaving the first tax prep firm, the group opened another tax company with offices in South and Central Florida, according to federal officials.

They employed the same fake claims scheme at this second tax company, and again trained others to expand their new tax cheating scheme.

In total, the multi-year operations across the Sunshine State caused a tax loss to the IRS of $3,090,077.

After a U.S. District Court judge accepts Mentor’s guilty plea, he will be sentenced. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, as well as a period of supervised release. The federal district court judge who will issue the sentence also could require restitution and monetary penalties from Mentor.

Co-conspirator pleas, trials: Several of Mentor’s co-conspirators previously pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the Florida-based false claims and fraudulent filing scheme.

Abryle Y De La Cruz and Emmanual Almonor pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States. Adon Hemley pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States and to aiding the preparation and filing of false returns. Isaiah Hayes pleaded guilty to aiding the preparation and filing of false returns.

Two remaining co-conspirators, Franklin Carter Jr. and Jonathan Carrillo, are scheduled to go to trial on June 2.

Tax Felon Friday: Yes, it’s back! With so much other tax stuff happening this year, the tax crimes feature that I usually posted at the end of the week got bumped.

I’m not promising every subsequent Friday will be full of felonious tax actions. But today, Tax Felon Friday has reappeared, and this post joins the previous ones on the ol' blogs' special Tax Felon Friday page.

And if you want more tax crime posts, notably those that were published long before I gave them a special end-of-week feature, you can peruse, what else, the tax crimes category. You'll find this post at the top of that collection right now, so just scroll down for more.

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