Maria Mendoza, a Las Vegas tax preparer, was sentenced to three years in prison for filing more than 700 fraudulent tax returns and causing the IRS a loss of 1.2 million dollars.
Mendoza used false and inflated deductions and credits on her clients’ tax returns, in addition to using her clients’ personal identifying information to obtain a larger refund on her own returns. She claimed more than three million dollars in refunds. She also diverted more than $500,000 from her clients’ refunds into her own bank accounts from 2013 to 2017. While on pretrial release she was arrested with a stolen passport, drivers licenses and credit cards, along with forged copies of checks.