Date: Nov. 19, 2024
Contact: [email protected]
Fort Myers, FL ¡ª United States District Judge Sheri P. Chappell has sentenced Heidi Torres-Moncaleano of Naples to one year and one day in federal prison for aiding in the preparation of numerous false and fraudulent income tax returns. Torres-Moncaleano was also sentenced to a one-year term of supervised release with a condition that she pay restitution to the IRS in the amount of $429,888. Torres-Moncaleano entered a guilty plea on April 17, 2024.
According to court documents, from 2018 through 2021, Torres-Moncaleano, through her business ¡°Torres Tax Services,¡± submitted fraudulent tax returns and Schedule C forms to the IRS. She inflated her clients¡¯ personal and business losses to generate larger tax refunds. The actual tax loss to the IRS exceeded $847,000.
¡°A return preparer who artificially and illegally inflates your tax return is doing you no favors,¡± said Ron Loecker, Special Agent in Charge of IRS-Criminal Investigation¡¯s Tampa Field Office. ¡°Their greed and desire to prop up their business could leave you responsible for all that extra money you receive but which you are not entitled to.¡±
This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Patrick L. Darcey.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attach¨¦ posts abroad.