WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A Winston-Salem woman was convicted on a charge that she and others prepared 519 false tax returns, resulting in $1.3 million in refunds, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
Claudia Lynette Shivers entered a guilty plea Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of North Carolina to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States by filing false tax returns. She faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Under the terms of the plea agreement, she must pay $38,266 in restitution.
Federal prosecutors allege in court documents that Shivers, S. Wayne Patterson and another person owned and operated a tax return business called Fast Tax of Winston-Salem, Inc., on Liberty Street. Shivers and two other people also owned and operated a tax return business named Quick Taxes, LLC in Greensboro.
Prosecutors said that between January 2014 and April 2017, Shivers, Patterson, Kristyn Dion Daney and Rakeem Lenell Scales helped prepare 519 false tax returns for Fast Tax and Quick Taxes that claimed $1.3 million in fake tax refunds.