Date: Nov. 19, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Fort Myers, FL — United States District Judge Sheri P. Chappell has sentenced Heidi Torres-Moncaleano of Naples to one year and one day in federal prison for aiding in the preparation of numerous false and fraudulent income tax returns. Torres-Moncaleano was also sentenced to a one-year term of supervised release with a condition that she pay restitution to the IRS in the amount of $429,888. Torres-Moncaleano entered a guilty plea on April 17, 2024. According to court documents, from 2018 through 2021, Torres-Moncaleano, through her business “Torres Tax Services,” submitted fraudulent tax returns and Schedule C forms to the IRS. She inflated her clients’ personal and business losses to generate larger tax refunds. The actual tax loss to the IRS exceeded $847,000. “A return preparer who artificially and illegally inflates your tax return is doing you no favors,” said Ron Loecker, Special Agent in Charge of IRS-Criminal Investigation’s Tampa Field Office. “Their greed and desire to prop up their business could leave you responsible for all that extra money you receive but which you are not entitled to.” This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Patrick L. Darcey. 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 more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
