Latest news with #Forms941
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Man and woman plead guilty in refund scheme involving pandemic relief tax credits
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — A man and woman have pled guilty to involvement in a refund scheme that included pandemic relief tax credits. Court documents revealed Kendra Michelle Eley filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) eight Forms 941, Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Returns, for Kreative Designs by Kendra, LLC, between Oct. 11, 2022, and May 24, 2023. The eight forms covered four tax periods in 2020 and four tax periods in 2021. Eley falsely reported wages paid and federal tax withholdings for eighteen employees on each of the forms despite having none. In the four forms filed for 2021, Eley claimed false Sick and Family Leave Credits and Employee Retention Credit (ERC) through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, totaling approximately $713,000 and $252,000 respectively, with total refunds claimed of over $900,000. The IRS issued two U.S. Treasury refund checks made payable to 'Kendra M. Eley, Kendra Cleans Maid Services' on Dec. 9, 2022, and on Dec. 13, 2022, totaling $649,050. On Dec. 23, 2022, Eley and Rejohn Isaiah Whitehead opened a business checking account in the name of Kendra Cleans Maid Services LLC (KCMS), and the signatories on the account were Eley and Whitehead. Eley and Whitehead falsely represented the nature and extent of KCMS as a business to open the business account. Eley funded the account by depositing one of the refund checks in the amount of $389,640. On Jan. 9, 2023, Eley wrote Whitehead a check from the account for $20,000. She wrote Whitehead an additional check from the account for $40,000 on Jan. 21, 2023. On Feb. 13, Whitehead pled guilty to engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 26 and faces up to 10 years in prison. Eley pled guilty on Thursday to one count each of false claims and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property. She is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9 and faces up to 10 years in prison. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
15-02-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Woman Pleads Guilty in Covid Tax Credit Scheme That Netted $33 Million
Some people binge-watched shows during the Covid pandemic. Others picked up pickleball. But according to federal prosecutors, one Las Vegas woman prepared and filed false tax returns for her business and others at an astonishing average rate of nearly 80 per month. Over a 16-month period beginning in June 2022, the Justice Department said Friday, the woman, Candies Goode-McCoy, filed more than 1,200 returns in order to fraudulently claim Covid-19 tax credits of nearly $100 million. Ms. Goode-McCoy, 34, who pleaded guilty under a plea agreement on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas to charges of conspiracy to defraud the government, managed to get the I.R.S. to pay out about $33 million, prosecutors said. She took $1.3 million of that herself, they said, and received an additional $800,000 from those for whom she prepared the false returns. Ms. Goode-McCoy, who could face as much as 10 years in prison when she is sentenced in February 2026, used the money to gamble at casinos, take vacations and buy luxury cars, prosecutors said. She also purchased designer clothing from Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, court documents show. Her lawyer could not be reached for comment on Friday. According to prosecutors, the businesses for which Ms. Goode-McCoy prepared taxes were not eligible to receive the refundable credits in the amounts claimed. Under the plea agreement, Ms. Goode-McCoy agreed to return the most of the $33 million that was fraudulently obtained. The fraudulent tax returns were filed from around June 2022 through September 2023, officials said. The refunds that Ms. Goode-McCoy sought were based on the Employee Retention Credit and the Sick and Family Leave Credit programs, court documents showed. The tax credits were part of trillions in relief money, approved by Congress and sent to individuals and businesses after the Covid-19 pandemic began five years ago. The Employee Retention Credit program offered companies thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that the pandemic was hurting their businesses but that they were continuing to pay workers. Sick and Family Leave Credit offered tax breaks to employers who voluntarily gave their workers paid sick and family leave if they needed to take time off because of the pandemic. The businesses Ms. Goode-McCoy owned were incorporated in Nevada, court documents show, and carried names like Changing Lives Movement, Exclusive Flavors, Queen Smith Professional Corporation and Candies King Elliott. Investigators said that she had worked with others, including an unidentified co-conspirator, to use commercial tax preparation software to remotely file 1,227 forms, even though none of the people or businesses she applied for had been eligible for those tax credits or in the amounts that she claimed. She 'always knew that the Forms 941 she was filing were fraudulent,' prosecutors said in court documents, referring to the forms that employers use to report income taxes, Social Security tax or Medicare tax withheld from employees' paychecks. Government investigators have struggled to keep up with pandemic-related fraud, focusing their efforts and limited resources on large, multimillion-dollar cases. Federal prosecutors have used novel methods and have even relied on private citizens to hunt for potential cases of fraud. Washington distributed billions of dollars with few strings and little oversight as part of its response to the pandemic. The Small Business Administration's inspector general has estimated that more than $200 billion — or at least 17 percent of the pandemic loans that the agency distributed — was awarded to 'potentially fraudulent actors.'
