Date: October 19, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A San Bernardino County man has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for willfully underreporting the income he received from his plastics recycling business, causing a tax loss of nearly $170,000, IRS Criminal Investigation announced today. Filemon Bernal, of Fontana, was sentenced on Monday by United States District Judge Dale S. Fischer, who also ordered him to pay $276,549 in restitution to the IRS. Bernal pleaded guilty on May 8 to one count of subscribing to a false tax return and one count of willfully failing to file a tax return. Judge Fischer ordered Bernal to surrender to the Federal Bureau of Prisons by November 20. Bernal willfully filed false tax returns for the tax years 2010 to 2014, then willfully failed to file tax returns during the tax years 2015 to 2017. Specifically, he willfully underreported his gross receipts for Bernal Recycling, his plastics recycling company, then did not file tax returns at all. The total tax loss to the United States Treasury was $169,974. "Mr. Bernal had multiple opportunities to accurately report his income," said Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher, IRS Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office. "Over a period of eight years he willfully and knowingly defrauded the U.S. government and placed additional tax burden on the shoulders of hardworking taxpayers, and now he'll feel the repercussions of his actions." IRS Criminal Investigation and the United States Postal Inspection Service investigated this matter. Assistant United States Attorneys Derek R. Flores and Haoxiaohan Cai of the United States Attorney's Office for the Central District of California prosecuted this 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. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, boasting 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.
