Lake Worth teacher pleads guilty to tax fraud

Georgia Gaines, 47, of Lake Worth, plead guilty on Thursday to five counts of assisting and advising in the preparation of fraudulent income tax returns to the IRS and five counts of filing false personal tax returns, which failed to report income she earned from her tax preparation business.

She is scheduled to be sentenced on August 28th at 9:30 a.m. At sentencing, Gaines faces a maximum statutory term in prison of 5 years on each of the 10 counts to which she pled guilty and mandatory restitution.

According to documents and statements made in court, from 2002 to 2005, Gaines was employed as a teacher in Palm Beach County.  During this time, Gaines prepared Individual Tax Returns claiming tax refunds for herself and on behalf of various taxpayers, knowing that these returns contained materially false information.  Specifically, the tax returns prepared by Gaines for her clients included hugely inflated claims for itemized deductions, or in some cases, large business losses, which were false but which reduced the amount of federal income tax that appeared to be owing.  In each case, Gaines claimed a tax refund that was based on the inflated deductions.  Gaines’ tax fraud scheme resulted in fraudulent deductions or business loss claims of more than $1,100,000.00 on the returns she prepared for others.

On her own tax returns, Gaines failed to report income totaling more than $200,000, which she earned between 2002 and 2006 by preparing tax returns for others, according to the Indictment and court statements.