Convicted tax preparer won’t quit; judge gives him 9 months
PITTSBURGH – An income tax preparer on probation for filing dozens of fraudulent income tax returns just wouldn’t quit preparing people’s taxes, so a federal judge sentenced him to nine months in prison.
Larry Snow, 65, of Seward was sentenced Wednesday for what Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr. called Snow’s “blatant disregard of the court’s order.”
Among other things, Snow was ordered to stop preparing returns after he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years’ probation in 2012.
Snow had a reputation of getting larger refunds than other tax preparers, though his customers didn’t provide the false information Snow used to obtain the refunds, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Dillon said.
Rather, Snow instructed his employees to inflate his customers’ itemized deductions using what he called “IRS gimmes” – or deductions that don’t need to be documented – and an office “cheat sheet” that told his workers what fake numbers to use, Dillon said.
A statistical analysis caught the irregularities. Before he was indicted, Snow’s office handled up to 1,500 returns annually. In one year, 720 of them included itemized deductions. That, in itself, isn’t unusual except 232 of those returns listed the exact amount – $3,229 – for charitable contribution deductions.
Another 207 returns listed charitable deductions of $3,224, each, Dillon said.
Snow was back in court Wednesday because a former employee told investigators he was still preparing returns, and the IRS was able to find at least eight that listed Snow’s federally issued tax preparer ID number on them for the 2013 tax year, according to a petition to revoke his probation.
“As incredulous as it might be to us in the courtroom, Mr. Snow did not understand that what he was doing was an affront to the court,” defense attorney Stephen Stallings told the court.
Stallings then called Snow’s friend, Robert Williams, to testify that he’s been running Snow’s former tax preparation business, housed in a building next to Snow’s home, on property Snow owns.
“I’m in charge of it now, it has nothing to do with Larry,” Williams testified.
But that failed to satisfy the judge, especially after Dillon got Williams to acknowledge he only began running the business in February – a day after the feds moved to revoke Snow’s probation — and that Snow had been in the office every day until the judge held a probation revocation hearing last week.
Williams also testified that he’s making only $130 a week running a business from which Snow used to gross $140,000 annually, and has yet to formalize any agreement to buy the business from Snow or even rent the building.
Snow didn’t help his own case when he told the judge, “I’ve been violated on this more than anyone else has.”
The judge agreed with Dillon who argued Snow’s actions and remarks show he is unrepentant and “rationalizes everything, and he takes the position that he is right and everybody else is wrong.”