A former professional tax preparer in Georgia has been sentenced to serve 33 months in prison in a case in which three other colleagues have already received sentences. Smith was found guilty of conspiring to defraud the United States by filing returns designed to inflate client refunds. Smith was also ordered to pay $566,171 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
Co-worker Greene Wylie Sheppard has already been sentenced to 56 months in prison; Sabrina Johnson-Lavant to eight months and Chandra Henderson to 18 months. Their actions at Quick Tax produced more than $500,000 in fraudulent returns.
Smith and the co-conspirators utilized unmerited tax credits and also purchased the identities of others so that clients could claim additional dependents on their returns. The group tracked the identities they sold and how much clients owed them for phony dependents in notebooks they maintained.