A New York tax preparer, nicknamed The Magician, pleaded guilty to duping the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with fake returns filed on behalf of his clients for several years, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Rafael Alvarez, 61, was charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the United States and stealing government funds and one count of assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, according to a Dec. 17 statement from the agency.
“The charges arise from Alvarez’s orchestration of a decade-long, $145 million tax fraud scheme to file tens of thousands of federal individual income tax returns that included false information designed to fraudulently reduce the individuals’ tax burden.”…