A man from North Carolina was sentenced today to 15 months in prison for preparing fake trust tax returns on behalf of customers in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.
According to court documents and testimony, Thy Muhammad owned and operated Seventh Millennium International, a tax preparation firm in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
Muhammad submitted bogus trust tax returns for customers in 2013 and 2014, falsely indicating that the clients had paid taxes in the name of supposed trusts. One such fake return led in the IRS issuing a refund check in the amount of more than $500,000, from which Muhammad stole about $78,000 as a preparation “fee.”
During these two years, Muhammad claimed more than $5 million in bogus IRS refunds that his clients were not entitled to.
In addition to the prison sentence, District of Columbia U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss ordered Muhammad to serve three years of supervised release and pay $669,000 in restitution.
The announcement was delivered by Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.
The case was probed by the IRS-Criminal Investigation.
The Tax Division’s Trial Attorneys Jeffrey McLellan and George Meggali, as well as former Trial Attorney Abigail Burger Chingos, prosecuted the case.