|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Three sisters from the Rio Grande Valley were sentenced Wednesday for their roles in a conspiracy to file fraudulent tax returns to the IRS, according to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District Court.
Maria Lourdes Campos, Elizabeth Romo and Gloria Romo pleaded guilty on May 2. Campos was sentenced to over three years in prison while Elizabeth Romo was sentenced to three years and Gloria Romo received a one-year supervised release.
Additionally, Campos was ordered to pay $151,741 in restitution while Elizabeth Romo and Gloria Romo were ordered to pay $119,793 and $9,528, respectively.
During the hearing, the court heard testimony regarding details about the systemic nature of the tax fraud at Campos Tax Service where the employees perpetuated inflated and fraudulent tax returns as part of the business model and without explicit instruction, according to the release.
“Throughout the years that Maria Campos orchestrated this scheme, she enjoyed the financial spoils, including purchasing luxury vehicles and expanding her business to three locations,” the release said.
Campos was the owner and operator of the business for over 10 years while her sisters worked as employees.
According to the release, the Campos Tax Service filed about 6,501 federal income tax returns that included over $5 million residential energy between 2018 to 2020.
“With the sisters’ assistance, most [Campos Tax Service] clients fraudulently applied for and claimed either residential energy credits, business expenses or childcare credits,” the release said.
The employees did this in order to earn larger tax refunds for their clients and once they completed the tax forms, they wouldn’t review the completed documents with the clients and only gave them refund amounts or incomplete documents, according to the release.
The fraudulent filings between the sisters resulted in a total sustained tax harm of $3,672,472.
“The Campos and Romo sisters turned their family business into a large-scale tax fraud operation, expanding their scheme across multiple locations to drastically increase the number of fraudulent tax returns submitted to the IRS,” Lucy Tan, the acting special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation’s Houston Field Office, said in the release. “Their business model was not just about financial gains, but also undermined the public’s trust in the integrity of tax preparers, who are relied upon to submit honest and accurate tax returns.”
All three were permitted to remain on bond and voluntarily surrender to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility, the release said.
