South Carolina Return Preparer Sentenced to Prison for Tax Fraud

A South Carolina woman was sentenced today to 37 months in prison for conspiring to defraud the United States by preparing and filing false tax returns.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Georgina Gonzalez, formerly of Miami, worked as a tax return preparer since at least 2013. For the 2016 and 2017 tax filing seasons, Gonzalez temporarily relocated to South Carolina to prepare returns and manage multiple locations of a tax preparation business located in Columbia. At these offices, Gonzalez conspired with others to inflate client refunds by preparing returns that falsely claimed, among other things, business losses, household help income, and American Opportunity and education tax credits. Gonzalez and her co-conspirators charged clients up to $999 to prepare each return. In total, Gonzalez caused a tax loss to the IRS of more than $420,000.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ordered Gonzalez to serve three years of supervised release and to pay approximately $423,917 in restitution to the United States.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs for the District of South Carolina made the announcement.

IRS-Criminal Investigation investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Ashley Stein, Francesca Bartolomey, and Jessica Kraft of the Tax Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday for the District of South Carolina prosecuted the case.