Date: February 14, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov A Maryland woman was sentenced today to three years in prison for preparing false tax returns for District of Columbia residents as part of a nationwide tax fraud scheme. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Charese Johnson, of Aberdeen, prepared 13 false income tax returns that collectively sought more than $6.6 million in refunds from the IRS. Between 2014 and 2016, scheme participants held seminars throughout the country where they promoted the purported ability of taxpayers to utilize their mortgages and other debts to generate tax refunds. Information was then collected from clients and provided to Johnson and others for use in the preparation of false returns. Those returns falsely claimed that banks and other financial institutions had withheld large amounts of income taxes from the clients, which entitled the clients to refunds. In reality, the financial institutions had not paid any income to or withheld any taxes from the clients. Johnson tried to conceal her role in the scheme by convincing one of her clients to mislead the IRS about Johnson's involvement in the preparation of the client's tax returns. On July 1, 2021, Johnson was convicted at trial of three counts of helping others prepare false tax returns. Thus far, more than a dozen other individuals around the country have been charged or convicted for their involvement in this multimillion-dollar scheme. In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss ordered Johnson to serve one year of supervised release. Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department's Tax Division made the announcement. IRS-Criminal Investigation investigated the case. Trial Attorneys Jeffrey McLellan and George Meggali, and former Trial Attorney Abigail Burger Chingos, of the Tax Division prosecuted the case.
