Date: May 7, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A Minnesota man was sentenced today to 108 months in prison for wire fraud and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. According to court documents and statements made in court, from 2012 to 2018, Beau Wesley Gensmer, of Prior Lake, developed a scheme to file 63 false tax returns that claimed fraudulently inflated tax refunds on behalf of unwitting taxpayer clients. In furtherance of his scheme, Gensmer hired two tax returns preparers, including one based in Anchorage, Alaska, to whom he knowingly emailed false information, including fraudulent business losses and charitable contributions. The return preparers relied on the information provided by Gensmer, and as a result, prepared and electronically filed false returns for each of his clients. Gensmer charged his clients a commission of approximately 30% for each fraudulent refund. In total, Gensmer caused a tax loss to the IRS of approximately $6.7 million. As part of his scheme, Gensmer also provided “audit protection services” to clients who were audited by the IRS for the fraudulent tax returns he helped prepare. Gensmer submitted false documents to the IRS during these audits. In addition to his prison sentence, U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim for the District of Minnesota ordered Gensmer to serve three years of supervised release and to pay $4,716,732.35 in restitution to the United States. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger for the District of Minnesota made the announcement. IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI) investigated the case. Trial Attorney Dominick Giovanniello and former Trial Attorney Ahmed Almudallal of the Tax Division prosecuted the case. 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, 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.
