A former mayor in Florida and his wife were charged with criminal tax offenses and making false statements to federal agents.
According to the indictment, former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, 48, and his wife, Raiza Villacis Robaina, 39, sought to defraud the IRS by conducting financial transactions that concealed their true nature.
Julio Robaina allegedly filed false corporate income returns for the years 2005 through 2007, a time when he was mayor
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Tax scam emails that appear to be from the IRS run the gamut from almost believable to incredibly bad. Thanks to a Forbes article by Tax Girl Kelly Phillips Erb titled: “Phony Emails Purporting To Be From IRS Popping Up Again,” we have two fine examples of email scams that run the good and bad spectrum.
Email scam example #1 – really bad.

A few points mentioned in the article demonstrate how
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The stories that caught our attention this week ranged from tax evasion and fraud, to how the Offer in Compromise Program can help consumers, erasing tax debt in bankruptcy to the increase in IRS criminal investigations to the IRS under intense scrutiny.

The IRS Gets Scrutinized – By far the biggest IRS story this week revolved around the IRS itself! The agency is being closely examined for unfairly targeting conservative
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Just last week, the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) released its Annual Report for 2012 showing strong increases in enforcement actions and IRS penalties imposed on convicted tax criminals for the year ending Sept. 30, 2012. According to the IRS bulletin announcing the report’s release, the criminal investigation division investigates potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes in a manner to foster confidence in the
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Donna Guerin, 52, former CPA and tax attorney for Jenkens and Gilchrist, received an 8 year prison sentence and will be required to pay $190 million in restitution for her participation in what the Treasury Department calls “the largest criminal tax fraud in history.” An Accounting Today article titled: “Tax Attorney CPA Sentenced to 8 Years for Massive Tax Fraud Scheme“ provides some details of this landmark case:

Guerin ran a massive
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With tropical storm intensity, Florida is currently leading the nation in tax identity fraud cases. A previous Tax Matters blog post cited a recent CNBC article titled “Florida Hit by ‘Tsunami’ of Tax Identity Fraud” that underscores the severity of this major, nationwide tax problem the IRS has been unable to resolve. According to the CNBC article, however, tax identity fraud is more than just a nuisance. It has now
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A New Jersey man who owned several air conditioning businesses was sentenced to five months in prison and five months of house arrest for tax evasion.
Mark Trawinski, 59, of Morganville, N.J., pleaded guilty to willfully attempting to evade payments of accrued employer’s quarterly federal taxes and the associated trust fund recovery penalties.
According to court records, Trawinski owned and operated three heating and air conditioning businesses. For various tax quarters,
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This week’s tax topics ranged from tax evasion cases to getting tax relief with the IRS Offer in Compromise Program. Here are highlights from the ones covered on the Tax Resolution University Blog:
Tax Evasion

Nancy Armienti, 59, of Elmer, New Jersey, admitted to evading federal income taxes in 2008 on nearly $700,000 in income she took from her former employee of Atlantic County Concrete and Material Company. Armienti created false
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A former resident of Las Vegas who defrauded 17 people out of $1.5 million received eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion.
From 1990 to 2004, Aneal Maharaj, 65, operated a multi-level marketing program from Las Vegas that promised participants that they could pay off a 30-year mortgage in five years or less by investing in his “PowerNet Marketing Systems.” The system required the investors to recruit additional people
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A Las Vegas lawyer was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $260,625 in restitution after pleading guilty to tax evasion for tax year 2002.
Operating as a sole practitioner in Nevada, Charles C. LoBello concealed more than $900,000 in income from the United States, intentionally gave incomplete information to his bookkeeper and tax return preparer, and used personal checking accounts to hide large checks he received as legal
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Even though the latest voluntary disclosure program has officially past, it is still better to come clean with unreported offshore bank accounts than to wait for the IRS to contact you. The IRS is placing more severe penalties on non-compliant offshore account holders than ever before. A recent Forbes article titled “Florida Widow Guilty + $21M Penalty for Inherited Swiss + Liechtenstein Accounts,” explains just how tough it has become.
The article’s
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As I have stated in previous blog posts, some of the largest challenges facing the IRS are identity theft and tax fraud. Currently, the IRS has been audited and is under pressure from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to tighten the reigns regarding refund splitting. An article in Accounting Today titled Splitting Refunds May Lead to Fraud discusses a recent TIGTA report that scrutinizes refund splitting as
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Happy Friday! Here are some of the tax relief news headlines we reported on this short holiday week:
IRS Audits-Back Taxes
It appears that comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo never thought she was married believing her 20 year “sham wedding” in Las Vegas to writer and producer Rob Cohen decades ago was not real. However, the IRS may not see it that way. They couple could face an IRS audit and IRS
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The former New York State Senate majority leader pleaded guilty to filing a false and fraudulent federal tax return for the year 2005.
Pedro Espada Jr. concealed money he took from Soundview Healthcare Center, where he was CEO and president, through a janitorial company he owned. Espada also defrauded the IRS of taxes owed on income he earned from the sale of a property on Leland Avenue in the Bronx by
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In September, I wrote a blog post about how identity theft issues were adversely affecting the financial lives of everyday people we know. I used the case of Robert “Sully” Sullivan, Big Biz Show radio and TV personality and friend of Tax Resolution Services, who had just discovered he was a victim of IRS identity theft and was inquiring what to do next. Since that last meeting, I met with
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