Tax Preparer Gets 30 Months' Prison For Tax Fraud
Contact: Peter Deegan
A woman who worked as a tax preparer for a national tax preparation chain and filed false tax returns for herself and others in Waterloo was sentenced today to more than two years in federal prison.
Latanya Bailey, 32, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after a September 3, 2010, guilty plea to one count of assisting the filing of a false tax return and one count of filing a false tax return.
At the guilty plea, Bailey admitted she knowingly provided false information on her own tax return in 2010 and helped another person provide false information on their tax return in 2007. In a plea agreement, Bailey admitted she helped many more people file false tax returns when she was working as a tax preparer.
Bailey was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. At the sentencing hearing, the Court found the amount of loss caused by Bailey’s fraud was over $80,000. Chief Judge Reade described Bailey’s crime as “outrageous,” noting that Bailey stole money from the government through tax fraud and then received government benefits such as food stamps and unemployment assistance.
Bailey was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $200 was imposed, and she was ordered to pay $1,921 for the costs of her prosecution. She must also serve a one-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Bailey was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger and investigated by Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is CR 10-2028-LRR.
