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Rafael Alvarez, 60, submitted thousands of bogus tax returns over a 10-year period, Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said.
It was one of the single biggest tax ripoffs by a single tax preparer in history, federal authorities announced on "Tax Day" Monday, April 15.
And it allowed Alvarez to pull in $15 million in revenue in just three years, Williams said.
It also won Alvarez his sleight-of-hand nickname for an "ability to make customers’ tax burden disappear,” the U.S. attorney said.
Alvarez, who lives in the Westchester County hamlet of Cortland Manor, ran his ATAX personal and business tax preparation service on Broadway from under the "El" in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx.
It was there, authorities said, that he recruited customers for whom he and his employees fraudulently inflated IRS refunds by ginning up itemized deductions, business expenses and capital losses.
“Many of the numbers that Alvarez entered were completely fictitious, and were not supported by any evidence or documentation,” an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Manhattan alleges.
All told, ATAX prepared more than 90,000 income tax returns from 2010 through 2020, when Alvarez was CEO, owner and manager, federal authorities said.
Alvarez bought his way out of trouble in 2021, paying the federal government a $159,600 disgorgement following a civil complaint from Williams's office, records show.
The indictment unsealed Monday charges him with tax fraud, ID theft, making false statements and conspiracy, among other counts.
Despite his nickname, Alvarez "can’t say 'abracadabra' and make these charges disappear," New York IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Fattorusso said during the subsequent announcement.
The arrest "was no magical illusion," Fattorusso said. "Alvarez now faces the reality of his actions."
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