Sandy man pleads guilty to filing $1.5M in false tax refunds

Sandy man pleads guilty to filing $1.5M in false tax refunds

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SANDY — A man from Sandy pleaded guilty to five counts of filing false claims for tax refunds Wednesday.

Paul Ben Zaccardi attempted to claim $1,510,251 in refunds by submitting five false tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service in 2008 for the years between 1996 and 2000, according to the Department of Justice. He was originally indicted for the fraudulent claims in June 2013, before being charged in a superseding indictment on Jan 8.

In addition to filing false tax claims for refunds, Zaccardi pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion and three counts of filing fictitious obligations in a U.S. District Court after an investigation was conducted by the IRS Criminal Investigation team.

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“According to the superseding indictment, in April 2004, Zaccardi embarked on a scheme to evade the payment of his income taxes,” a statement from the DOJ reads. “As part of that scheme, Zaccardi re-titled his residence so that it was not in his name and caused his business receipts to be deposited into his wife’s account.”

He also submitted three false and fictitious financial instruments “for the purported payment of his federal income tax liabilities,” totaling $6.05 million from June 2008 to Oct. 2011, to the IRS, U.S. Treasury and U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, according to the DOJ.

Zaccardi is scheduled to be sentenced before U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell on March 11. For each conviction of submitting fictitious obligations to the U.S., there is a maximum statutory sentence of 25 years in prison. He faces a statutory maximum of five years for each of the convictions for presenting false, fictitious and fraudulent claims in addition to the conviction for tax evasion.

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Natalie Crofts

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