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Date: Oct. 26, 2026
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Sacramento, CA – Antonio Honorato Silveira of Turlock pleaded guilty today to wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced.
According to court documents, Silveira worked as a tax preparer and accountant. By no later than June 2011, he began accepting money from clients to invest on their behalf. He promised annual returns of between 13% and 17% and memorialized those promises in signed promissory notes and guarantees. Investors gave Silveira discretion to invest their money in the stock market as he saw fit.
Silveira, however, was an unsuccessful stock trader and consistently lost money. He also diverted investor funds to pay his own expenses. By 2017, he wrote to three investors stating, “I no longer have any money, it was all lost. Doesn’t appear to be any new investors in sight either.” He went on to apologize, “This whole experience has been terrible and I apologize.” Despite these sentiments, Silveira continued to solicit new investors.
From 2019 to 2025, approximately 89 investors gave Silveira about $11.03 million. Throughout this period, Silveira knew he could not pay them the returns he promised. His losses continued: between 2019 and 2025, he had only two profitable years and five in which he lost money. His losses in each losing year exceeded the gains of any single profitable year. To cover up for the losses, Silveira used approximately $3.84 million of investor funds to make payments to investors falsely portrayed as investment returns.
By the time the scheme collapsed in 2025, Silviera owed investors approximately $7.19 million. More than 25 of Silveira’s investors suffered substantial financial hardships including the loss of retirement savings or college funds, delayed retirements, and the sale of a home.
The IRS Criminal Investigation conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas M. Fogg is prosecuting the case.
Silveira is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd on Feb. 8, 2027. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.
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.