Final Notice

Company Number One wanted an overpayment applied to a later tax year. The filed IRS-CI affidavit says it returned a paper refund check with that request. Instead of applying the credit as requested, the IRS issued another check after processing false changes to the company’s business-account information. That check, for $32,495,888.58, reached Christopher Dowtin. A second company’s refund check fo...

Iris Rabaya Au formed shell companies and opened bank accounts at the direction of her then-boyfriend, Adam Iza, who called himself “The Godfather.” According to the government’s account of her plea, funds moving through those accounts paid approximately $1 million to sheriff’s deputies, supported nearly $10 million in recreational spending, and purchased approximately $16 million in cryptocurrenc...

Laura Marie Means kept the books for a Jackson Hole family business with several lodging and hospitality properties. She managed payroll, bank accounts, and tax reporting, and continued working remotely after moving to Hawaii in 2019. According to the government’s account, Means routed unauthorized transfers to her own accounts while recording them in QuickBooks as “supplies” and “invoices.” She a...

James Soriano worked as a civilian engineer and Contracting Officer’s Representative at the Naval Information Warfare Center in San Diego. His position allowed him to influence evaluations, contract awards, project approvals, and payments. Court records indicate Soriano accepted benefits from defense contractors between 2014 and 2019. Those benefits included expensive dinners, golf outings, jobs f...

Michael J. Moore operated X Tax Pros, a Las Vegas tax and accounting firm specializing in adult-entertainment clients. From 2015 through 2025, he promised clients that his “Special Tax Shelter Strategy” could eliminate their taxes and create large refunds. Court records indicate Moore fabricated business losses, cost-of-goods-sold entries, and royalty expenses. Many claimed losses came from entiti...

Eric Brian Rosenberg, publicly known as “E. Brian Rose,” operated GC Wire, a digital news publication on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and ran for Congress in 2018. He owed federal income taxes for calendar years 2004 through 2016. When the IRS assigned a revenue officer to collect in April 2016, Rosenberg did not negotiate. Instead, he began draining his bank account by repeatedly purchasing cashie...

Ann Quach ran a tax preparation business in Thousand Oaks, California, under the names AQ Financial and A2Z Tax Solutions. From 2011 to 2024, she prepared 1,734 false Form 1040 returns for her clients. Her method was distinctive: she fabricated entire businesses her clients never owned, placed them on Schedule C, and loaded them with fictitious losses to offset the clients’ real W-2 income. She th...

Justin Ryan Schmidt founded Translunar Crypto LP, an Austin-based hedge fund focused on cryptocurrency investments. Between 2019 and 2022, he earned at least seven million dollars from his fund but reported income of five thousand dollars or less on each of his federal tax returns. He held millions in undisclosed foreign bank accounts, never filed an FBAR, and failed to pay the income taxes he owe...

Steven T. Loo had every advantage: eight commercial properties across Washington and California, a stack of LLCs, and a net worth prosecutors pegged at around $43 million. What he didn't have was any intention of paying his taxes. For years, Loo directed his property managers to send building profits into two bank accounts held by shell companies that had been dormant since 1999, spent the mo...

Regina Durkin, of New River, Arizona, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to file false claims after court records indicated that she and others submitted false quarterly employment tax returns to the IRS. The claims sought refunds based on the Employee Retention Credit and the paid sick and family leave credit, pandemic-era credits designed to help qualifying employers. According to court r...

Queen Naja, also known as Renata Winifred Ince and Naja Talibah Zahir, was sentenced to 165 months in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud after court records and trial evidence showed a scheme to use a legal trust, false tax documents, and a fraudulent payment to obtain a refund from the IRS. The IRS issued a Treasury check for $1,010,561.26, and the court later found additional false retur...

Dennis March and Greg March, twin brothers from Berlin, Maryland, each pleaded guilty to tax evasion for concealing income and failing to pay business and individual taxes. According to their guilty pleas, the brothers owned and controlled business entities and ventures including Elite Marketing Group LLC, Elite MG LLC, and Principal Law Group. The government said they concealed income by arrangin...

Carl Mitchell of Crete, Illinois, known professionally as Twista, pleaded guilty on June 24, 2026, to five counts tied to willfully failing to pay income tax for 2019 through 2023.  Court records and statements made in court indicate Mitchell earned income from performances, album sales, streaming, and royalties, and that both the IRS and Mitchell’s accountants repeatedly informed him of his tax d...

A federal jury convicted Marcia Predmore, Roderick Prescott, Suzanne Thompson, and Weldon Wulstein for their roles in an abusive layered trust tax shelter that DOJ says helped business owners evade federal income tax on up to 98 percent of business profits.  The shelter used a business trust, family trust, charitable trust, and private family foundation, and was marketed with the phrase “own nothi...

Vinh Q. Ho and Thanh Lan Do owned and managed a nationwide nail salon business operating under Anthony Vince Nail Salons, Prive Nail Spas, and Zen Nail & Spas. Prosecutors said the business paid a significant portion of nail technician compensation in cash, omitted that cash from year-end tax forms, trained salon managers to operate the under-the-table payroll, prepared false Forms 1099, and i...

A trust can be a legitimate estate planning tool. In this case, prosecutors said purported trusts became the vehicle for a multimillion-dollar tax refund fraud scheme. Brandon Hunt, his father David Hunt, his twin brother Baylon Hunt, and his half-brother Corey Burt were convicted at trial for their roles in a scheme to file false tax returns in the names of trusts they controlled. Prosecutors sai...

Dr. Pankaj Merchia controlled several sleep medicine companies and, on paper, looked like a Harvard-educated success story. Federal prosecutors said he was running a shell game.  From 2017 to 2019, Merchia billed insurers millions for sleep apnea machines former patients hadn't used in years, some of which had already been returned, and used the proceeds to buy a $2.1 million home. He billed...

Congress created the Employee Retention Credit to help struggling businesses keep workers on payroll during the pandemic. Candies Goode-McCoy of Las Vegas treated it like an ATM.  From approximately June 2022 through September 2023, Goode-McCoy conspired with others to file more than 1,200 tax returns for her own businesses and for others, claiming the Employee Retention Credit and the paid sick a...

John Kungu owned a successful business, Advanced Nursing Care, in Townsend, Delaware. He also owed the IRS nearly $1.2 million, and he decided to lie his way out of it.  In this episode of Final Notice , tax attorney Jason Carr breaks down how Kungu ran his scheme on two fronts: filing false personal and corporate returns that disguised hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal spending as busi...

Rafael Alvarez built a high-volume tax preparation business in the Bronx. Prosecutors say he also built one of the largest tax fraud schemes ever committed by a return preparer.  In this episode of Final Notice, Jason Carr, tax attorney, breaks down how Alvarez and ATAX New York allegedly prepared tens of thousands of false federal income tax returns using bogus itemized deductions, made-up capita...

Thomas C. Goldstein was one of the best-known appellate lawyers in the country. He argued more than 40 cases before the United States Supreme Court and co-founded SCOTUSblog, a widely read source for Supreme Court coverage.  He was also, according to federal prosecutors, a high-stakes poker player who frequently played in games involving tens of millions of dollars.  In this episode of Final Notic...

Michael Kirouac owned or controlled four companies: HK Manchester, HK Loudon, HK Hudson, and HK Pelham. Prosecutors said he applied for and obtained more than $1 million in Economic Injury Disaster Loans, certifying that the money would be used solely as working capital and not for personal expenses or business relocation.  But when Kirouac wanted to purchase Angus Lea Golf Course and could not ob...

Rene Mauricio Escobar and Juana Nelida Escobar operated Escobar Plastering in Orlando, Florida. Federal prosecutors said they used the company to help construction subcontractors pay workers off the books, avoid payroll taxes, and avoid workers’ compensation insurance premiums.  According to the DOJ, the defendants caused certificates of insurance in Escobar Plastering’s name to be sent to constru...

Kerwin Aldric Jordan was a California tax preparer who operated The Jordan Corporation and Jordan and Jordan A Financial Conquest. Prosecutors said he held himself out as a tax attorney and certified public accountant, even though he was neither.  In this episode of Final Notice , Jason Carr breaks down how Jordan used non-existent businesses and fake business losses to reduce clients’ taxable inc...

David Gebhardt was a Tennessee-licensed attorney from Brentwood. According to DOJ, he bought cryptocurrency, used decentralized exchanges and nominees to conceal income, and failed to report millions of dollars in income from cryptocurrency sales and his consulting business.  From March 2018 through December 2022, DOJ says Gebhardt withdrew approximately $6.6 million from cryptocurrency sales. Des...