Tax Fraud Blotter: Mother knows best
PTIN without permission; further the conspiracy; fictitious children; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
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Las Vegas: A Las Vegas man was sentenced to 38 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,052,378 in restitution for conspiring to defraud the United States by filing false tax returns with the IRS and diverting portions of the resulting tax refunds to himself and his codefendant.
Ivan Odiaga prepared federal income tax returns at Silver State Tax & Multiservices, a tax prep business in Las Vegas owned by his mother and co-defendant, Iris Hondermann. From approximately 2017 through 2021, Odiaga and his mother prepared tax returns for clients that included one or more false items, including business profits and losses, COVID-19 sick and family leave credits and residential energy credits. In 2020 and 2021, Odiaga prepared some of these returns using the PTIN of another tax preparer without permission.
Between 2017 and 2021, Odiaga and his mother prepared false tax returns filed with the IRS seeking more than $5 million in refunds that their clients were not entitled to receive. At times, Odiaga and his mother also diverted portions of client tax refunds to themselves. From 2017 through 2021, they diverted more than $1.1 million in fraudulent tax refunds to bank accounts one or both of them controlled.
Hondermann previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States.
Wichita, Kansas: A Kansas business owner was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison for failing to forward payroll taxes paid by his employees to the IRS.
Bradley Wayne Base, 58, of Augusta pleaded guilty to one count of failure to pay over tax.
Base owns Sunflower Behavioral Health which provides therapy services. Between the first quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2023, Base withheld state and federal employment taxes from his employees’ wages but failed to pay over taxes to the IRS. As part of his plea agreement, Base must pay $469,799 in restitution to the IRS.
Fenton, Michigan: A Fenton woman faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States over the course of about 12 years.
Since 2012, Roxanne L. Huneycutt owned and supervised several full-service staffing companies that recruited temporary employees to perform tasks for clients, such as manual labor and office administration.
The staffing companies’ responsibilities include handling payroll and employment taxes. However, the companies failed to pay about $1.7 million in employment taxes to the IRS from 2012 through 2024, according to the DOJ.
Huneycutt also failed to pay penalties assessed against her by the IRS for her failure to pay certain employment taxes.
Additionally, she changed the names and locations of the staffing companies and filed paperwork with the state indicating she did not own the businesses to avoid detection and further the conspiracy.
Huneycutt used funds gained through the conspiracy to cover personal expenses, including travel, clothing, jewelry, housing and décor.
She is set to be sentenced on Feb. 18, 2027.
Brooklyn, New York: Felix Cordoba was convicted on all 14 counts of an indictment charging him with preparing false tax returns containing fictitious children, solar expenses and business expenses, and related charges of wire fraud. When sentenced, Cordoba faces up to 20 years in prison and financial penalties.
The charges in the indictment arise from Cordoba’s role as a tax preparer at his business located in East Elmhurst, New York. For the tax years 2020 and 2021, Cordoba prepared false and fraudulent Forms 1040 and associated schedules and forms for clients that contained a variety of false claims. The most common false claims involved solar energy expenses and business property sales, which were entirely fictitious and which Cordoba included on his customers’ returns. Cordoba also frequently falsely claimed that his customers took care of children that did not exist.
Based on the fraudulent returns charged in the indictment, as well as other publicly filed court documents but which were not specifically addressed at trial, the government expects to prove at sentencing that Cordoba’s conduct resulted in the filing of many thousands of false returns and a loss of more than $24 million to the IRS.
San Diego: Peter L. Roper, of San Diego, operated various La Jolla-based businesses that marketed and sold purported federal tax credits throughout the United States. Between 2010 through 2021, Roper and his businesses received nearly $19 million in income, on which he owed more than $6.7 million in federal income taxes.
Roper and his businesses, however, did not report any of this income on tax returns or pay taxes to the IRS. Throughout this period, Roper used his businesses’ bank accounts to pay personal expenses and concealed assets by titling them in the names of others. Instead of paying taxes, Roper spent $187,432.34 on a 2015 McLaren 650S Spider and another $277,698.50 on a 2021 Aston Martin DBX, among other things.
Roper pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 8, 2027, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Anchorage, Alaska: The former general manager of an Anchorage business was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and is required to pay nearly $3 million in restitution for defrauding the business of millions, while also committing tax evasion.
In 2008, James Wohlers, 58, of Deatsville, Alabama, was hired by GBR Equipment/Oilfield Services, an Anchorage based business that provides oilfield services on the North Slope and elsewhere, as their human resource manager. In 2009, Wohlers became their general manager. Part of his responsibilities included coordinating wire transfers from GBR’s bank account to outside accounts.
In 2019, an audit was completed on GBR’s finances and bank records after employees determined the company was earning sufficient revenue but was unable to pay vendors and employees. The audit revealed that from at least 2013 through 2019, Wohlers executed wire transfers from the GBR account that did not benefit the company and used GBR’s corporate credit cards for personal expenses.
In 2015, Wohlers formed a partnership named BGI Industrial Services. In 2017, GBR performed services for two companies. Wohlers sent both companies invoices from BGI for $25,000 and $2,500 respectively, and both companies paid the invoices. He claimed BGI and GBR were the same company. The money meant for GBR service was deposited into BGI’s bank account. Wohlers also used GBR credit cards to pay for business expenses related to BGI and used employees paid by GBR to complete work on behalf of BGI.
In late 2015, Wohlers announced GBR employee pay cuts to address GBR’s poor financial condition. He manipulated payroll entries to increase his own pay, used GBR money to purchase a car, boat and building and fund personal travel to China, all while cutting the pay of GBR employees in Alaska.
Wohlers did not report the stolen funds on his tax returns and ultimately signed and filed materially false tax returns in 2016 through 2019. The IRS determined the tax loss to be over $340,000.
Wohlers pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax evasion. Wohlers was ordered to pay $2,590,084.50 in restitution to GBR and $340,584 in restitution to the IRS.
In addition to 58-months in federal prison, Wohlers was ordered to pay a fine of $200,000.
Brentwood, Tennessee: A Brentwood business owner pleaded guilty to failing to pay federal taxes tied to his employees’ wages, a case prosecutors say involved nearly a decade of unpaid employment taxes.
Thomas William Jones, 59, pleaded guilty to one count of failing to collect and pay taxes to the IRS.
Jones owned and operated Alternative Solutions Consulting Corp., a software consulting company in Franklin. He controlled the company’s bank account and paid employees from it.
From 2014 through 2023, Jones failed to file required forms reporting employees’ wages and did not make required payments to the IRS. The total amount of taxes he failed to collect and pay was no more than $1,975,964.24.
