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Joseph Kenny Batts, 52, of Elkridge, MD became the third of five men sentenced for preparing bogus tax returns at Tax Pro’s and Tax Solutions & Associates in Essex and Union counties.
Batts, who already had a federal tax fraud conviction on his record, was the only one of the group to go to trial.
U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp convicted him of conspiracy to defraud the United States, as well as five counts of aiding in preparing false federal income tax returns following a bench trial in September 2019.
The other four – co-owner Damien Askew of Union and employees Rudolph Sanders of Newark, Tony Russell of Stone Mountain, GA and Angelo K. Thompson of Reistertown, MD– all took plea deals.
Together with the three employees, Batts and Askew “conspired to falsify their clients’ income tax returns for the purpose of generating refunds in amounts that their clients were not entitled to” over six years, ending in 2015, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig said.
The cons included “fabricating and inflating credits for education and child care, deductions -- such as charitable contributions and unreimbursed employee expenses -- and Schedule C business losses,” Honing said.
The group also used bogus IRS Forms 1098-T to support false education credits, the U.S. attorney said.
Batts, who’d previously been convicted for tax fraud, also used his accomplices’ taxpayer ID numbers to conceal his identity, she said.
Thompson was sentenced to a plea-bargained 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Russell was sentenced to a plea-bargained 48 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Askew and Sanders are awaiting sentencing for their pleas.
Because there’s no parole in the federal prison system, Batts must serve out the entire term for his guilty plea to conspiring to defraud the IRS.
Shipp, who presided over all of the proceedings, also sentenced Batts to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $1.2 million in restitution to the IRS during a video conference from Trenton on Thursday.
Honig credited special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation with the investigation leading to the conviction and the sentencing, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cari Fais and Jihee G. Suh and of her office in Newark.
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