Sacramento mother and son sentenced to prison for filing false tax returns
A Sacramento mother and son were sentenced to federal prison on Monday for a phony tax return scheme prosecutors said bilked the Internal Revenue Service of $1.5 million in refunds.
Dominic Davis, 40, pleaded guilty to conspiring with his mother, Sharita Wright, to file several false tax returns, and also to filing still more returns for himself, family members and friends, a plea agreement filed in Sacramento federal court shows. Wright, 61, also pleaded guilty.
Nine false returns, which sought about $2.5 million in unearned tax refunds, were filed between 2019 and 2022 in connection with the scheme, prosecutors said. The IRS paid out $550,000 on the ones Davis filed with his mother, and another $918,000 for returns that he filed on his own, according to the plea agreement.
The tax returns purported to show that Davis, Wright and their friends and relatives had worked for corporations that they had set up. But the group did not do any work for the limited liability corporations, commonly known as LLCs.
In addition to submitted fake work records including W-2 forms, the returns claimed large taxable deductions from charitable donations that never took place, the plea agreement said.
Davis prepared and filed the returns, while Wright provided him information and checked with the IRS about when the refunds would be coming, prosecutors said.
Wright personally visited an IRS office in 2021, presenting documents that she said entitled her to a refund of more than $407,000. The IRS paid it to her, the agreement shows.
Davis was sentenced to three years and four months in prison, and Wright was sentenced to 15 months in prison, Acting U.S. Attorney Kimberly Sanchez said in a news release. They were both ordered to pay restitution, Sanchez said.
