Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jamie McDonald, and Assistant Attorney General of the National Fraud Enforcement Division, Colin M. McDonald, announced today that STEVEN HOLTZ, ISRAEL PELLOT, and ALTON SCOTT have pled guilty in connection with their operation of a tax preparation firm owned and controlled by HOLTZ and known as the Holtz Group. Tax preparers at the Holtz Group, including HOLTZ, PELLOT, and SCOTT, falsified information on Holtz Group clients’ federal income tax returns in order to fraudulently reduce the tax liability of the clients and improperly increase the tax refunds they claimed from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). This, in turn, allowed HOLTZ to charge tax preparation fees that were, at times, tens of thousands of dollars and, in some instances, more than one hundred thousand dollars for certain clients.