New Jersey tax preparer Brian Day pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns and bank fraud in a scheme to misappropriate clients’ money and defraud the IRS.
Day told his clients that they owed more money to the IRS than they actually did. He instructed them to write checks made out to the IRS and then altered the payee information on the checks to make them payable to one of his tax prep companies. He made these false claims to at least five individuals, resulting in a loss of $124,289.
When two clients questioned him about the checks he presented them with fake documents he claimed were from the IRS.
In addition, Day is accused of submitting at least 21 false tax returns to the IRS from tax years 2009 to 2015, resulting in a loss of approximately $491,000 to the IRS.
From 2013 to 2015 he also inflated clients’ tax forms by more than $383,000 to get them bigger tax returns.
Day was sentenced to 32 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $500,000 in restitution.
