RIVERSIDE, California
Federal officials announced Tuesday that a Riverside County man has been sentenced to six years in federal prison for preparing and filing false tax returns for his clients.
Officials stated that the decade-long scheme caused a tax loss to the IRS of at least $28 million.
U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal sentenced Salvador Gonzalez, of Corona, received a sentence on Monday from United States District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, who also ordered him to pay $403,908 in restitution.
Gonzalez pleaded guilty on June 17 to three counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns.
Starting in 2013, Gonzalez operated Grace’s Lighthouse Resource Center, Inc., a Corona-based tax return preparation business.
During that time, Gonzalez prepared thousands of tax returns for his clients, consistently advising them to create fraudulent corporations and to transfer ownership of their homes, cars, and other assets to these fake entities.
He then referred his clients to an associate to prepare the tax returns for these sham corporations. The associate would provide the clients with a blank spreadsheet and instruct them to input their business expenses.
Following Gonzalez’s instructions, the clients would list personal expenses, such as mortgage payments, car payments, and utility bills, as business expenses on the spreadsheet.
The associate would then use this information to prepare the business tax returns, which inevitably showed a loss. These fabricated losses would flow through to the client’s individual tax returns, fraudulently reducing the income taxes they owed.
Gonzalez personally prepared the clients’ individual tax returns, incorporating the fraudulent business losses to offset their income.
To further reduce their tax liabilities, Gonzalez fabricated additional deductions, including unreimbursed employee expenses, charitable cash contributions, and medical and dental expenses. As a result, his clients paid significantly less in taxes than they were legally obligated to.
Gonzalez profited from these practices.
Before 2019, he charged a flat fee of $500 per tax return. In 2019, he began charging clients 1% of their gross income as his fee.
According to court documents, Gonzalez caused the IRS a total tax loss of at least $28 million.
Consistent with the plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office—Tax Section, filed a civil complaint in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, against Gonzalez.
In the past decade, the Justice Department has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers.
Information about these cases is available on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website and the Justice Department’s website. An alphabetical listing of persons enjoined from preparing returns and promoting tax schemes can be found on this page.
IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter.
Assistant United States Attorney Eli A. Alcaraz of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and Trial Attorney Lauren K. Pope of the Justice Department’s Tax Division prosecuted this case.