Alabama tax professional sentenced

 

Date: Feb. 3, 2025 

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Montgomery, AL — On Jan. 31, 2025, a federal judge sentenced Natoshia Lashawn Crawford to 30 months in prison for making false tax returns and assisting in the filing of false tax returns, announced Acting United States Attorney Kevin Davidson and Special Agent in Charge Demetrius Hardeman with IRS Criminal Investigation’s Atlanta Field Office. Federal inmates are not eligible for parole.

According to her plea agreement and other court records, from 2018 through 2022, Crawford owned and operated On Time Professional Tax Service, LLC, in Montgomery, Alabama. There, Crawford prepared and filed federal income tax returns for clients. In her plea agreement, Crawford admitted that she included false information in tax returns filed on behalf of herself and others. Doing so caused Crawford and some of her clients to receive greater refunds than they were entitled to receive.

In one example, Crawford reported a total income of $23,116 in her 2020 tax return. When Crawford pleaded guilty on May 13, 2024, she admitted that she knowingly excluded other income she received from her business. The false reporting of Crawford’s income for 2020 resulted in a lower amount of tax due and an underpayment to the IRS in the amount of $32,867. Crawford also admitted that she filed a 2019 return for a client claiming a business loss of $90,171 for a janitorial services business which did not exist. In her plea agreement, Crawford further agreed that the multiple false returns she filed for herself and others during the 2017 – 2021 tax years caused a total loss of $1,721,047.45 to the IRS. In addition to the prison sentence, the judge also ordered that Crawford pay restitution to the IRS for losses from returns filed by her for the 2017 – 2021 tax years.

“For far too long, opportunistic tax return preparers like Ms. Crawford have viewed the IRS as a piggybank,” stated Acting United States Attorney Davidson. “As was the case here, preparers attempt to get larger refunds for themselves and their clients by putting false information on the tax returns they prepare. Hopefully, Ms. Crawford’s sentence will cause anyone who has considered cheating the system like this to honestly and accurately prepare tax returns.”

“The sentence Natoshia Crawford received is an example of the expected outcome others could face should they willfully defraud the government by submitting false and inaccurate tax returns,” said Special Agent in Charge Hardeman. “IRS Criminal Investigation special agents will investigate and turn over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecution those who commit tax crimes.”

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) investigated this case, which Assistant United States Attorney Megan A. Kirkpatrick prosecuted.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.