One accurate, one false; rotten fruit; security alert; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Pittsburgh: Tax collector Jeanne Bowser, 63, of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release after being convicted of wire fraud and filing false income tax returns.
Bowser was the elected tax collector for Center Township, Pennsylvania, and collected taxes for a nearby school district. From about December 2011 until mid-2019, she embezzled some $1,028,183.81 in tax payments by writing checks to herself out of a bank account that was used for tax deposits and by stealing cash tax payments. She also filed false income tax returns for six years.
Kissimmee, Florida: Tax preparer Marcos Antonio Tejeda has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for preparing false returns for himself and others.
Tejeda, who pleaded guilty in December, owned and operated a tax prep and accounting business and provided personal and business services for a specific client in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Tejeda maintained a business bank account into which the client deposited money for estimated federal tax payments.
In 2016 and 2017, Tejeda prepared a 1040 for the client; each year Tejeda prepared two versions of the same return, one he claimed was accurate and one he knew was false. The accurate return included the estimated tax payments that the client made and was predominately correct. This first version in both 2016 and 2017 also…
