Tax Lawyer's Blog

“He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend – provided, of course, that he really is dead.”

 - Voltaire -

WebCPA reports that a California man has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. after he was accused of filing at least 250 tax returns of deceased individuals (emphasis added):

Haroon Amin of Upland, Calif., pleaded guilty Monday to the charges. He was indicted, along with Ather Ali of Diamond Bar, Calif., in December 2008. The two were accused of filing the returns in 2002 and 2003 falsely stating that the deceased individuals earned wages from which income tax was withheld. The false returns claimed more than $2 million in income tax refunds.

The IRS rejected most of the refund claims, but it issued a number of refund checks that were delivered to addresses controlled by Amin, Ali and their co-conspirators, including to various mailboxes opened by Ali using false forms of identification. Most of the refund checks were then delivered overseas to be deposited in bank accounts in Armenia and Pakistan.

Yikes! Does Homeland Security know about this?

By the way, does anyone doubt that Mr. Amin and Mr. Ali are unenrolled tax preparers?

Aside: I have filed tax returns for dead people. Millions of tax preparers have. In fact, most of us will have a tax return filed for us after we are dead.

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