A man who ran tax preparation offices in Yonkers, New York, has pleaded guilty to helping file false returns that cost the Internal Revenue Service more than $5 million. Joseph Clay, 52, of Lodi, New Jersey, entered the plea on October 1, and the same conduct cost New York State close to $900,000 more.
What Clay admitted
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the plea in a press release. Clay operated Premier Tax and Professional Services LLC and Prime Tax & Professional Services LLC in Yonkers. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel to one count of aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false and fraudulent individual income tax return. The charge was brought by information.
The maximum sentence for that count is three years in prison, and the judge decides any actual sentence. No sentencing date has been announced. As part of the plea, Clay agreed to pay the IRS more than $5 million in restitution.
Deductions and credits that were not real
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Clay filed more than 3,500 individual income tax returns with the IRS and New York State. He routinely put false information on them, it says, including inflated and fictitious itemized deductions and fraudulent residential energy credits, to lower his customers’ tax and increase their refunds. The scheme ran from 2019 through 2024 and covered tax years 2018 through 2023. The release adds that he kept filing fraudulent returns even after a guilty plea to state tax fraud…