Plus, an accountant allegedly stole thousands from an ice rink construction company, and a male tax preparer who pretended to be a woman named Alyssa Jean Pipes is accused of screwing over his clients.
Former state senator’s accountant convicted of tax fraud [Justice Department]
John Nardozzi, an accountant for former Massachusetts senator Brian A. Joyce, was convicted on Oct. 16 by a federal jury for conspiring with the late senator to defraud the IRS from 2011 through 2014.
Nardozzi, 67, a CPA based in Waltham, MA, was convicted after a seven-day trial of defrauding the IRS of approximately $600,000 by manipulating income that should’ve been reported on Joyce’s corporate tax return and by applying it to Joyce’s personal tax return.
He was also convicted of falsely creating a single-employment pension (SEP) fund for Joyce and his wife, to which they weren’t otherwise entitled. In doing so, Nardozzi enabled Joyce and his wife to defer taxes on approximately $400,000 of income. Nardozzi also assisted Joyce in an illegal rollover of Joyce’s SEP account to purchase stock in a private company without following the IRA rollover rules.
In addition, Nardozzi attributed income from Joyce’s law firm to Joyce’s wife even though she never worked for the firm.
Nardozzi is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 9, 2020.
Accountant accused of stealing $269,000 from Georgia school by diverting checks, credit card transactions [WXIA-TV]
Willard Huffins, a former accountant at Central Christian School in Sharpsburg, GA, was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month and charged with stealing almost $270,000 from the school by fraudulently redirecting funds into a personal account.
He is facing one charge of racketeering, two of theft, and one of identity fraud.
Huffins allegedly opened a bank account in the Central Christian School’s name without the school’s knowledge and began siphoning money into it in March 2017. For the next 21 months, he deposited checks made out to the school into that account, using it for his personal expenses.
Trainee accountant, 20, is banned from driving after speeding away from police in her Audi at 70mph in a 40mph zone while over the limit [Daily Mail]
Lucy McDermott, who admitted to having around four glasses of wine in the hours before driving on Sept. 20, pleaded guilty to a single charge of driving with excess alcohol on Oct. 16.
McDermott, 20, from Accrington, Lancashire, was banned from driving for 12 months, fined £400, and ordered to pay £85 cost and a £40 surcharge.
She allegedly accelerated her £24,000 Audi A3 when a police car approached behind her at 2 a.m. on Sept. 20. A breath test revealed that McDermott had 47 micrograms of alcohol in 100 milliliters of breath, breaking the legal limit of 35.
Police: Man stole nearly 60K from Cambria County ice rink company [WJAC-TV]
Michael Hammond, the former accountant and controller for Everything Ice Inc. in Salix, PA, is facing a slew of theft- and forgery-related charges after allegedly stealing nearly $60,000 from the ice rink construction company.
Hammond wrote himself 18 unauthorized checks ranging from $2,500 to $5,642.36 between Feb. 15 and June 28 of this year, authorities said. He then tried to hide the transactions by deleting the checks or renaming them to vendor names.
Hammond faces multiple counts of felony charges, including receiving stolen property, forgery, and theft.
Arizona tax preparer sentenced to three years probation for falsifying tax returns [Arizona Attorney General’s Office]
Former tax preparer Karen Hernandez was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $11,000 for preparing false income tax returns while working at Tax Xpress in Phoenix.
During the 2016 and 2017 tax filing seasons, Hernandez, 26, prepared nine false returns and increased her fees by including a Schedule A with false itemized deductions. Her clients didn’t know that Hernandez had falsified their returns, which resulted in either higher refunds or reduced the taxes due. The seven affected taxpayers will have to file amended returns and be responsible for the additional taxes due along with interest.
Hernandez has been ordered to pay restitution to taxpayers to cover the cost of preparing amended returns and any interest or penalties on the unpaid tax due.
Tax preparer bilked CT shore clients out of thousands [Patch.com]
Joseph Parker, a tax preparer who also posed as a woman, was arrested on a warrant last week charging him with identity theft and multiple counts of larceny in connection with the theft of at least $500,000 from his tax preparation clients.
From late 2017 through 2018, Parker, 30, doing business as Joseph Parker Tax Services in Connecticut, allegedly used processes such as double billing and credit card fraud to siphon money from his clients without their knowledge.
The scam also involved Parker posing as a woman named “Alyssa Jean Pipes.”
He was charged with first-, second-, third-, and fifth-degree larceny; two counts of third-degree identity theft; payment card fraud; and multiple counts of failure to appear.
