Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that SAMUEL GENTLE, a tax preparer and the owner of tax preparation businesses named GenGen, Inc., and GenGen Financial, Inc., in Mount Vernon, New York, was sentenced today in White Plains federal court to 51 months in prison for obstructing the IRS and preparing false and fraudulent individual income tax returns for his clients. GENTLE was found guilty in July 2016 after a one-week trial before U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “As established at trial, Samuel Gentle abused his position as a tax preparer to file false tax returns on behalf of his clients, himself, and his businesses. His fraud resulted in over half a million dollars in losses to the IRS, and now a sentence of 51 months in prison for Gentle.”
As established by the evidence at trial:
From 2010 through 2014, GENTLE operated a large and thriving tax preparation business that prepared and submitted to the IRS, on average, 3,200 tax returns each year. These tax returns contained a pattern of false and fraudulently inflated deductions for business expenses and gifts to charity. Numerous clients of GENTLE testified that they had not provided GENTLE with any information that he could have used to support the false or inflated deductions.
As part of the investigation of this matter, an undercover IRS agent posed as GENTLE’S client. During the operation, the agent provided GENTLE with no records that he could have used to support any deductions. But, consistent with his pattern, GENTLE included false and fraudulent deductions for business expenses and gifts to charity on the tax return he prepared for the undercover agent.
GENTLE also failed to report on his own personal and business tax returns nearly half of the $1 million in receipts that he received for his tax preparation services from 2010 through 2014. He spread the receipts across eight bank accounts at five banks, and he failed to issue required IRS forms to himself or his employees, further concealing from the IRS the amount of receipts he and his business had received.
As confirmed by IRS audits as well as the evidence at trial, GENTLE’s crimes resulted in a loss to the IRS of more than $550,000.
In addition to the prison term, GENTLE, 59, of Mount Vernon, New York, was sentenced to one year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $125,000 fine and to pay the IRS over $295,000 in back taxes.
Mr. Bharara praised the investigative work of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, and thanked the IRS for its assistance.
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