Owner of tax prep business found guilty of conspiring to defraud the IRS

Date: Sept. 4, 2026

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Manoach Chayaud of Carmel, Indiana, was convicted today at trial of a years-long conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). 

The defendant was charged by indictment in December 2024, arising from a scheme that ran from approximately November 2013 through February 2022, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

As proven at trial, Chayaud recruited two individuals to assist him in a scheme to file false tax returns on behalf of clients of his tax preparation business, setting up an office in Indiana, where he lived, and an office in Philadelphia, where the two co-conspirators lived. 

Chayaud taught the two co-conspirators how to prepare tax returns to increase client refunds by, among other things, filing false Schedules C claiming large losses for businesses that the client did not have, fraudulently claiming education credits, and fraudulently claiming Schedule A deductions. 

As a result, the defendant and his co-conspirators were able to increase the refunds for their clients and charge additional tax preparation fees. Chayaud and one of the co-conspirators split the proceeds of the business; the other co-conspirator was paid a percentage of the fees the business charged.

The defendant is scheduled to be sentenced on December 15 and faces a maximum possible term of five years in prison, a fine, or both.

On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (“Fraud Division”). The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department’s work to combat fraud supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.

This case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jessica Rice and David Ignall.

IRS-CI is the law enforcement 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. It is the only federal law enforcement agency with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code. IRS-CI has 16 field offices located across the U.S. and maintains an international presence through attaché posts abroad.