Federal Court Shuts Down Atlanta-Area Tax Preparer

A federal court in Atlanta permanently barred Matthew Adegbite and his companies, MAS & Associates CPA LLC and Mathew A. Adegbite CPA PC, from preparing federal income tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today.  The permanent injunction order was signed today by Judge Clarence Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

According to the complaint, Adegbite has prepared more than 1,000 returns since 2008.  Allegedly, Adegbite repeatedly understated his clients’ federal tax liabilities by claiming false or inflated tax deductions and credits his clients were not eligible to take.  Adegbite’s alleged schemes include claiming the First Time Home Buyer Credit for taxpayers who did not actually purchase homes, deducting fictitious business expenses for taxpayers who did not operate a business and inflating deductions for legitimate businesses to claim losses for otherwise profitable enterprises.  The complaint further alleged that the harm to the U.S. Treasury as a result of his conduct could amount to millions of dollars and that a permanent injunction was warranted to prevent further harm.

Return preparer fraud is one of the Internal Revenue Service’s Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2013 .  The IRS has tips for choosing a tax preparer: www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Choosing-a-Tax-Professional .  In the past decade, the department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers.  Information about these cases is available on the department website.

Related Materials:

United States v. Matthew Adegbite, et al.
Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction