Thomson mother and son plead guilty to tax fraud, ordered to pay $680,000 in restitution

The owners of a McDuffie County tax preparation service have been sentenced to prison for filing dozens of fraudulent tax returns, obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess IRS refunds for clients.

Annie Bailey, 67, of Thomson, was sentenced to nearly two years in prison and her son, Tremarcus Bailey, 43, of Thomson, was sentenced to almost three years in prison after they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, said Jill E. Steinberg, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge J. Randal Hall also ordered the Baileys to pay $683,046 in restitution and to each serve three years of supervised release after their prison terms.

There is no parole in the federal system.

As described in court documents and testimony, Annie Bailey owned Bailey’s Tax Service in Thomson and her son, Tremarcus, was an employee, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia. The company prepared income tax returns on behalf of customers since 2000.

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The business came to the attention of IRS Criminal Investigation in 2017, when they realized the Baileys used fraudulent information when filing tax returns for individual customers in order to illegally inflate the amount of refunds the clients would receive, according to the release.

The investigation determined that from 2014 to 2018, the fraudulent returns prepared by the Baileys resulted in $683,046 in criminal tax losses to the IRS, according to the release.

"The sentencings of the Baileys should serve as a notice to dishonest tax preparers that their fraud will eventually be uncovered," said Demetrius Hardeman, acting special agent in charge, Atlanta Field Office of IRS-Criminal Investigation. "We will continue to investigate and prosecute tax preparers who willfully include false items on tax returns, and this is a reminder to taxpayers to review their return with the preparer for accuracy."

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Thomson mother and son sentenced for tax fraud