A Nevada CPA has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax return fraud and scamming clients. Lance K. Bradford of Henderson, Nav., must also pay $6,734,338 in restitution to the United States.Bradford pled guilty to aiding and assisting the filing of false tax returns.
In 2011 Bradford, who also operated a real estate business, began a scheme in which clients made payments to his partnership and in exchange received a tax deduction about five to seven times the amount of money paid.
Bradford knew the deductions were not permitted and did not report investments as losses on clients’ tax returns, but instead used a variety of techniques hike the returns they received.
One example came in 2014, Bradford asked a client for $417,780 investment in his partnership and in exchange would enter depreciation-based losses on his client’s 2013 corporate tax return. Instead, he inflated the company’s cost of goods sold by by $2,110,000,
