Date: March 7, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
BOSTON — A New Bedford woman was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for stealing federal funds by filing false tax returns to obtain fraudulent tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Valentina Martinez was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris to 12 months of supervised release under home confinement, with electronic monitoring for the first six months. Martinez was also ordered to pay $41,823 in restitution to the IRS. In December 2024, Martinez pleaded guilty to five counts of theft of government money.
Martinez previously worked for a national tax return preparation service. After preparing returns for clients and providing them copies of their returns, Martinez added fraudulent claims for business deductions to the clients’ returns without their knowledge and electronically filed the false returns in order to obtain fraudulent refunds. Martinez caused the tax refunds to be deposited onto debit cards that she used to make ATM withdrawals, including paying for a Florida vacation and other personal purchases. Martinez’s scheme was discovered and her employment terminated when a taxpayer client complained to the return preparation service about a missing refund. By then, Martinez had already filed at least 12 false returns and caused more than $40,000 in losses to the IRS.
The prosecution of Martinez is part of a Stolen Identity Refund Project (SIRF) program operated by the IRS to identify tax preparers who use stolen identities to steal money from the United States Treasury by filing false tax returns that claim tax refunds without the named taxpayer’s knowledge.
United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and Thomas Demeo, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Boston Field Office made the announcement today. Assistant United States Attorney Victor A. Wild of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.