A South Dakota federal judge has sentenced a Sioux Falls tax preparer to more than two and a half years in prison for a fraud scheme investigators say ran through his own business and touched hundreds of other people’s returns. Amon Eustache Aboua, who operated ACU Tax Services, was sentenced September 21, 2026, to 33 months in federal prison and ordered to repay $540,267.43 in tax restitution. IRS Criminal Investigation says the fraud reached more than 500 returns filed through the business, a scale that turns this from one man’s bad tax filings into a client list of people whose own returns may now warrant a second look.
Thirty-Three Months And A Six-Figure Restitution Order
U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier sentenced Aboua on September 21, 2026, to 33 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release, according to the IRS-CI sentencing announcement. The court also ordered $540,267.43 in tax restitution, on top of a separate $232,600 owed for child support, the release states, a combined debt that follows Aboua well past his release date, since a criminal restitution order does not disappear the way an unpaid invoice might.
What a 500-return sentence doesn’t fix for clients: A preparer’s conviction closes the government’s case, but it does not tell any individual client whether their own past return was one of the ones falsified, which is a documentation gap the kit’s evidence-and-report log is built to help close. See how The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit organizes a fraud evidence log.
More Than 500 Returns Tied To ACU Tax Services
IRS-CI ties more than 500 returns to Aboua’s business, ACU Tax Services, though the fraud charges themselves centered on more than 20 clients whose deductions were fabricated between February 2018 and April 2019, per the agency’s release. Prosecutors say Aboua invented charitable contributions and itemized expenses on those clients’ returns to inflate their refunds, without the clients’ knowledge, and then personally profited from the padded amounts. A scheme built on returns the actual filer never reviewed line by line is one where the taxpayer, not just the preparer, can end up owing the IRS money later.
The gap between the 500-plus returns IRS-CI ties to the business overall and the roughly 20 clients named in the fabricated-deduction scheme is itself notable: it means the government’s case focused on a specific pattern of fraud within a much larger client base, rather than alleging every return ACU Tax Services filed was falsified. For the hundreds of other clients whose returns fall outside that 20-client group, the release offers no assurance one way or the other about whether their filings were affected, since IRS-CI’s announcement addresses the charged conduct, not the full scope of the business’s return volume.
Federal Prosecutors On The Pattern Behind The Case
U.S. Attorney Ron Parsons said in the IRS-CI release announcing the sentence that anyone defrauding the government, whatever form that theft takes and whatever scheme is used, should expect to hear from federal prosecutors. IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent William Steenson added that return preparers carry a responsibility to prepare and submit accurate tax returns on behalf of their clients, a responsibility the government says Aboua violated repeatedly across the life of the business. Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Connie Larson prosecuted the case, according to the same release…