Tax Cheat Gets 18 Months for $1.2M Scam

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LATHROP, CA – Amy Evangelista, 60, will spend the next year and a half in a federal prison cell after admitting she helped clients cook their tax returns, dodging over $1.2 million in payments to the IRS. The sentence came down today in the Middle District of California.

Evangelista wasn’t skimming off the top for herself, according to court documents. She was a preparer, meaning she filled out and filed tax returns for others, and those returns were riddled with lies. The feds didn’t specify how those returns were fraudulent, just that Evangelista knowingly aided and abetted the scheme.

While $1.2 million sounds like a big operation, the scale suggests Evangelista wasn’t running a massive criminal enterprise. This looks more like a systematic pattern of abuse by a tax preparer preying on clients and willing to risk prison for the fee. Federal authorities are cracking down on these types of cases, sending a message that even ‘small-time’ tax fraud carries serious consequences.