Milwaukee tax preparer gets 4 years for filing false returns that could have cost US more than $3 million
A Milwaukee tax specialist will spend nearly four years in prison for helping hundreds of clients prepare false returns, federal prosecutors say.
U.S. District Judge Brett H. Ludwig on Tuesday sentenced Rodney C. Smith to 41 months in prison. Smith, 60, also must serve one year of supervised release when he gets out, and will have to pay $216,643 in restitution, along with a $400 special assessment.
He pleaded guilty in October to four counts of aiding, assisting, counseling, or advising the preparation of a false return.
Smith previously was convicted in federal court in 2010 with conspiracy to defraud the United States by filing a false income tax return.
In a statement Wednesday, Gregory J. Haanstad, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, said Smith willfully prepared the false returns through his business, Xpert Tax Services, on South Sixth Street in Milwaukee.
According to court records, Smith prepared fraudulent tax returns for his clients by making knowingly false representations in their returns about the clients’ dependents, wages, and income or losses from businesses. These misrepresentations qualified the taxpayers for a refundable Earned Income Tax Credit to which they were otherwise not entitled.
Smith filed 1,338 tax returns between 2018 and 2021, prosecutors said in court documents, estimating the tax loss associated with those filings was at least $3.3 million.
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The IRS executed a search warrant at Xpert Tax Services in 2020, and Smith at that time admitted to agents he knew he had violated federal tax laws, but Haanstad said he continued to prepare false returns for his clients the following year.
“Mr. Smith willfully and repeatedly sought to defraud the IRS and caused injury to every individual and business who played by the rules and paid their fair share of taxes due to fund vital government operations and programs,” Haanstad said in his statement.
The case was investigated by the IRS-Criminal Investigations and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kate Biebel.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee tax preparer gets prison time for filing false returns
