Cranston resident sentenced for preparing false tax returns, ID theft

PROVIDENCE – A 48-year-old Cranston resident was sentenced Friday to serve 36 months in prison for aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, wire fraud, theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft.
Belkis M. Guzman was a former employee of El Centro Multiservicios LLC, a tax preparation business in Providence.
Guzman pleaded guilty on Sept. 8 to the charges. In addition to the prison term, Guzman was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $928,224.95 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Rhode Island.
The news release said Guzman was involved in two separate schemes. One involved preparation and presentation of false individual income tax returns (Forms 1040) on behalf of El Centro clients for tax years 2009-11, on which Guzman “created, inflated and falsified dependents, exemptions, credits, deductions and expenses.”
The second scheme involved the deposit of approximately 100 U.S. Treasury checks totaling more than $800,700 into Guzman’s personal checking account. The checks were generated by filing fraudulent individual income tax returns containing stolen personal identifying information and fraudulent amounts of income, deductions and credits.
Guzman deposited the checks into her bank account after signing many of the checks in place of the payees who were unknown to her; she then provided most of the proceeds to a third party in cash and personal checks. Guzman then received a percentage as payment for depositing the checks into her account.

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