Date: Nov. 25, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that Mark Legowski of Farmington, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley in Bridgeport to eight months of imprisonment, followed by one year of supervised release, for filing false tax returns. Judge Dooley also ordered Legowski to pay a $10,000 fine. According to court documents and statements made in court, from January 2015 through December 2017, Legowski was a self-employed accountant and tax return preparer doing business as Legowski & Company, Inc. (“LCI”) in Farmington. Legowski prepared income tax returns for approximately 400 to 500 individual clients and approximately 50 to 60 businesses. For the 2015 through 2017 tax years, in order to reduce his personal income tax liability, Legowski willfully underreported LCI’s gross receipts in LCI’s computer bookkeeping system by excluding some customer payment checks. He then filed false personal income tax returns that failed to report a total of more than $1.4 million in business income, which resulted in a loss to the IRS of $499,289. In 2015, Legowski reported $0 in taxable income when the true figure was $415,697; in 2016, he reported $29,343 in taxable income when the true figure was $531,294; and in 2017, he reported $56,060 in taxable income when the true figure was $496,808. Legowski has paid the IRS $499,289 in back taxes. He still must pay substantial tax penalties and interest. On Aug. 29, 2024, Legowski pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return. Legowski, who is released on bond, is required to report to prison on January 8. This investigation was conducted by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Chen. 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.
