BOSTON — Claudia Carredano, a Lynn tax preparer, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Thursday in connection with a scheme to file fraudulent tax returns and pocket the excess funds she fabricated, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Carredano, 46, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, three years supervised release, and was ordered to pay restitution of $320,760 and forfeiture. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft last March.
Prosecutors said from 2008 to 2011, Carredano, who co-owned Maya Multi-Services, a tax preparation business operating on the North Shore, devised and executed a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by filing false tax returns on behalf of her clients.
Carredano reportedly filed dozens of false tax returns for her clients that included fraudulent dependents and real people who were not the dependents of her clients, intended to increase the tax refund amount, without her clients’ knowledge. She then deposited the inflated portion of the refunds into her bank account, prosecutors said.
She gave her clients’ tax returns that did not reflect the fraudulent dependents and sought smaller refunds than what she filed with the IRS, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.