Jury found two Orlando women guilty in federal tax fraud scheme
A federal jury found that two women from Orlando committed several felonies against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as part of a plan to cheat the government out of money through tax fraud.
According to the Department of Justice, the jury decided that Erotida Natasha Harden Ortiz and Aida Cortes were convicted of participating in a conspiracy to defraud the United States of America.
In addition, they decided that Ortiz was responsible for six counts of assisting in the making of fraudulent and misleading representations to the tax authorities.
Cortes served as Ortiz’s office manager when she ran Certified Taxes, LLC, which Ortiz owned and operated.
Between 2016 and 2018, they filed fake Schedule C forms, which told taxpayers who didn’t know about the scam that their business had lost money.
According to the Department of Justice’s study, the form enabled people to collect an earned income tax credit to which they were not entitled.
According to the officials, the taxpayers kept using Certified Taxes every year even though the company didn’t look at or go over the paperwork with customers before sending it to the IRS.
According to the Department of Justice study, Certified Taxes prepared more than 3,600 tax returns for clients and charged each of them $400. This resulted in more than $1 million in preparation fees for the firm.
On April 13, 2022, the authorities indicted Ortiz and Cortes for their crimes.
Their date to be sentenced is set for the month of January in 2023.
