There's a reason why reputed mobsters most often get taken down on tax evasion fraud. While organized crime bosses are able to cover their tracks and hide behind lower-ranking members, hiding money and cheating the Internal Revenue Service is not so easy.
If you're caught defrauding the IRS, the strong arm of the law comes down swift and hard. And an Illinois criminal defense attorney may have a difficult time defending against suspicious paper trails.
Which brings us to the story of 28-year-old Ovidiu Isac, whom authorities believe cheated the IRS out of roughly $1.3 million dollars, as covered by the Chicago Tribune.
The magnitude of his alleged crime is quite breathtaking. The Skokie man stands accused of filing 251 fake tax returns for the 2007 tax year and 127 fake returns for 2008; claiming about $2.1 million dollars in fraudulent refunds.
Authorities claim the smoking gun came in the form of several similarities among the disputed filings. The returns all were filed in the names of Romanian nationals; designated single taxpayers; showed very similar wage and withholding figures; did not identify a tax preparer and all included a form for moving expenses, almost all of them calculated at $21,000.
And here's the clincher, according to authorities: Almost all of the questionable returns were filed electronically with the exact same password.
But there seems to be even more evidence, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Federal authorities discovered that the addresses associated with the bank accounts for the deposited returns failed to match the addresses on the returns themselves. And many Chicago-area individuals holding those accounts often received more than one deposit per day.
That would be really nice to get multiple tax refunds; but of course it doesn't work that way.
Ovidiu Isac faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
While this is an extreme situation, it is easy for an average taxpayer to get nervous during an IRS audit. If you are concerned about possible issues regarding tax penalties, it may be wise to call an Illinois criminal defense attorney.
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