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 October 27, 2010, to more than two years in federal prison.
Yoshida Ford, 28, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after an August 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, Ford admitted she knowingly provided false information on her own tax return in 2008 and helped another person provide false information on their tax return in 2007. At sentencing, Ford admitted she helped many more people file false tax returns when she was working as a tax preparer. The amount of loss caused by her fraud was $111,813.
Ford was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. Ford was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $200 was imposed, and she was ordered to pay $1,329 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.
Ford is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until she can be transported to a federal prison.
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 10-2030-LRR.
