A North Carolina man pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to defraud the United States by promoting a nationwide tax fraud scheme and assisting in the preparation and filing of false tax returns for the scheme’s participants.
According to court documents, Mehef Bey, also known as Arthur Daniels, of Charlotte, promoted a scheme that involved recruiting clients and preparing false tax returns on their behalf by convincing them that their mortgages and other debts entitled them to tax refunds. Between 2014 and 2016, Bey and his co-conspirators held seminars across the country to publicize the scheme. As part of the scheme, Bey and his co-conspirators helped prepare and file tax returns for the participants, which collectively sought more than $64 million in refunds from the IRS. These tax returns falsely claimed that banks and other financial institutions had withheld large amounts of income tax from the participants, thereby entitling the clients to a refund. In reality, the financial institutions had not paid any income to or withheld any taxes from these individuals. To make the refund claims appear legitimate, however, Bey and his co-conspirators filed tax documents with the IRS that matched the withholding information listed on the tax returns, making it seem as if they had been issued by the banks.
As part of his plea, Bey admitted he and his co-conspirators charged their clients approximately $10,000 to $15,000 in preparation fees for each tax return. Although…
