Tax Preparer, Wife Convicted of Conspiracy, Filing False Claims

Former tax preparer Jerry G. Sonido Jr. was convicted Wednesday by a federal court jury on 17 counts of conspiracy and filing false income tax claims.

He faces up to 85 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 9 by U.S. District Judge Leland C. Nielsen. Sonido’s wife, Eleanor, was convicted on one count of conspiracy and faces five years in prison.

The Sonidos and two employees of their National City tax preparation firm were indicted by a federal grand jury in April. Prosecutors alleged that they lured 444 clients by promising them refunds totaling nearly $1.1 million.

Prosecutors charged that the operation was a refund fraud scheme, with the clients’ amended returns taking bogus deductions for sales tax, medical expenses, casualty and theft losses and false income tax credits. (The two employees pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting and testified for the government during the weeklong trial.)

Because Internal Revenue Service agents moved quickly, only 41 of Sonido’s clients received refunds, which totaled less than $50,000.

Most of the claims had not yet been filed with the government. Some clients’ income tax documents were discovered by undercover agents in a trash dumpster near Sonido’s office.

The firm operated only during the last three months of 1984, receiving more than $105,000 in fees during that time. The clients were primarily Filipino-Americans who were charged fees of 20% to 50% of their expected refunds. Sonido falsely boasted about being a former IRS agent, authorities said.

Sonido figured clients’ refunds at half the amount that had already been paid in taxes, Assistant U.S. Atty. Herbert Hoffman told the five-man, seven-woman jury during closing arguments Tuesday.

Sonido’s attorney, Frank Gregorcich, told the jury that the government’s case was a “dense cloud of smoke and innuendo” and that some of the clients who testified were “looking for a scapegoat” because they filed false returns “under penalty of perjury.”