A Port St. Lucie man was sentenced to 84 months in prison last week for filing false tax returns on behalf of his clients and for failing to report his true income on his own income tax returns, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, from 2012 through 2015 Richard Maurival prepared income tax returns for clients that claimed false education credits, business expenses, and other deductions in order to inflate by thousands of dollars tax refunds issued by the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to filing fraudulent income tax returns for his clients, Maurival falsified his own returns, underreporting the fees he earned in his tax preparation business for tax years 2012, 2013 and 2014.
In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge James Ivan Cohn for the Southern District of Florida ordered Maurival to serve one year of supervised release and pay $267,995 in restitution to the IRS.