And that’s not a typo in the title.
The telephone excise tax refund got a few bozo tax preparers thinking (an oxymoron, of course), “If the government is going to hand out this money [usually $30 – $60] with little documentation, why don’t I prepare a return asking for just a bit more? They’ll never catch me!”
And it’s likely that many, many preparers did just that. But you can definitely take things a bit too far, and that’s exactly what Herbert Jana, Aurora Perez, and Nancy Munoz are accused of doing.
Eric Martinez, Special Agent in charge of the Dallas field office of IRS Criminal Investigation, stated, “The allegations in this indictment are that this scheme in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex claimed more than $1.6 million in fraudulent telephone excise tax refunds, making it one of the most egregious telephone excise tax refund fraud schemes during this filing season.”
As for our alleged phone tax crooks being bozos, well, they were also a bit unlucky. As we’ve mentioned, Jackson Hewitt, the #2 tax preparation firm in the United States, is under a major investigation. So what did our alleged bozos name their firm? Jackson Hubbert.
If convicted, the defendants are looking at lengthy stays at ClubFed due to the size of the alleged fraud.