The day after; three and out; what a punk; and other highlights of recent tax cases.

Tyler, Texas: Tax preparer Karistha Johnson has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to a refund fraud.

Johnson was involved in a multiyear scheme involving the submission of returns containing false and fraudulent statements. She prepared and filed 610 returns from 2017 through 2019 and received $1,244,934 in fraudulent refunds.

Johnson was also ordered to pay that amount in restitution.

Detroit: Business owner Ali Kassem Kain has pleaded guilty to filing a false return and for not paying taxes on cash wages he paid to employees.

Kain owned and operated Specialized Overseas Shipping, which arranged for vehicles to be shipped to West Africa and other destinations for third parties. For tax years 2017 through 2020, he underreported the company’s gross receipts by $6.4 million and did not collect and pay over to the IRS taxes on $249,000 in cash wages.

Sentencing is Aug. 14. Kain faces a maximum of five years in prison for the employment tax offense and up to three years for filing a false return.

Providence, Rhode Island: Mortgage broker Joseph Giuttari, who ran a Ponzi scheme costing investors millions and who fraudulently obtained more than $160,000 in pandemic-related Small Business Administration loans and failed to pay more than $140,000 in federal taxes, has been sentenced to 55 months in prison.

Giuttari, owner and operator of Hybrid Capital Group, The Fens Co. and Realty Funding Advisors, pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud, theft of government property and filing a false return. The day after his guilty plea, he engaged in brokerage activities in violation of his condition of release. 

He purported to match borrowers seeking short-term loans with private lenders seeking secured investments in real estate. He directed investors and closing attorneys to send all or a portion of the loan money directly to him through his multiple business entities and business bank accounts. Instead of forwarding these funds to borrowers, he used the money personally or to repay earlier investors.

Giuttari also fraudulently acquired $167,800 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans for Hybrid Capital and Fens, and he lied on his 2019 individual income tax return that his total income was $22,176 when in fact it was at least $541,000; he failed to pay $140,102 due the IRS.

He was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay a fine of $20,000 and pay a total of $4,579,130.95 in restitution to victims of his scheme, to SBA loan programs and to the IRS.

Texarkana, Texas: Three men who all previously pleaded guilty have been sentenced to prison for their roles in a refund scheme.

Imafedia Adevokhai, of Alpharetta, Georgia, was sentenced to 46 months in prison and ordered to pay $90,380.60 in restitution and $3,500 in forfeiture. Michael Martin, of Texarkana, Texas, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $90,380.60 in restitution and $121,623.41 in forfeiture. Osazuwa Peter Okunoghae, of Houston, was sentenced to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay $451,117.63 in restitution and $451,117.63 in forfeiture.

Adevokhai, Martin, Okunoghae and others were involved in a multiyear stolen identity refund fraud involving the theft of victims’ personal ID information and use of the stolen information to file fraudulent returns. The fraudulent refunds totaled $4,945,886, and the federal government suffered at least a $390,220.40 loss.

Adevokhai was involved in the preparation and filing of many of the fraudulent returns; Okunoghae and Martin helped launder the money. They were connected to dozens of stolen IDs of taxpayers.

St. Louis: Elisa Y. Brown, 60, has pleaded guilty to falsifying 42 federal income tax returns for clients.

She admitted preparing false returns from 2016 to 2020. Brown prepared the returns with commercial tax prep software from her home in exchange for $150 to $250 per return. Brown, who did not have a PTIN and digitally signed each return in the name of the taxpayer, claimed false medical and dental expenses and cash donations as deductibles and included false Schedules C reflecting tens of thousands of dollars of false business expenses.

She admitted filing false tax returns for 11 clients, resulting in a tax loss to the IRS of $171,866. During the same time, she prepared and submitted 560 returns, many of which contained similar false deductible expenses.

Sentencing is July 22. Brown, who pleaded guilty to two counts of assisting in the preparation of a false return, faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or both, on each count.

San Diego: Restaurateur Leronce Suel has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for schemes to defraud pandemic relief programs and for filing false returns.

Suel, who owned the local restaurants Rockstar Dough LLC and Chicken Feed LLC, conspired to underreport more than $1.7 million in gross receipts on Rockstar Dough’s 2020 corporate return and pandemic relief applications. Suel’s businesses fraudulently received $1,773,245 in Paycheck Protection Program loans and Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants. He and his co-conspirator misappropriated relief money by making substantial cash withdrawals from their business bank accounts, purchasing a home in Arkansas and keeping more than $2.4 million in cash in Suel’s bedroom.

Suel did not file timely returns for 2018 and 2019. On his 2020 through 2023 returns, he also did not report the income from his businesses, including millions of dollars in cash he withdrew. In 2023, he filed false original and amended returns for multiple years, including personal returns for 2016 and 2017 that included false depreciable assets and business losses.

He was convicted last year of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, tax evasion, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., filing false returns and failing to file returns. He was ordered to pay some $1,773,245 in restitution to the SBA and forfeit $1,466,918.

Dillsburg, Pennsylvania: Waylon Wilcox has pleaded guilty to filing false individual income tax returns.

In April 2022, he filed an individual income tax return for 2021 that underreported his income by $8,511,238 and reduced his tax due by $2,180,452. In October 2023, he filed an individual income tax return for 2022 that underreported his income by $4,599,532 and his tax due by $1,098,623.

Wilcox obtained most of this income after acquiring and selling 97 pieces of digital artwork from the “CryptoPunks” collection. Individual pieces from the collection were referred to as “Punks” and each contained digital proof of ownership. Two Punks from the same blockchain could look identical but were not interchangeable, meaning they were non-fungible; non-fungible tokens can be traded and sold for money or cryptocurrency.

In 2021, Wilcox sold some 62 Punks for about $7.4 million. The next year, he sold some 35 Punks for about $4.9 million. On his 2021 individual income tax return, Wilcox falsely answered “no” to the question concerning virtual currency. On his 2022 return, Wilcox falsely answered “no” to the question regarding receiving or disposing of a digital asset or a financial interest in a digital asset.

He faces up to six years in prison, a term of supervised release and a fine. 

A dozen U.S. states are challenging President Donald Trump’s “immense and ever-changing” global tariffs in court, alleging he illegally bypassed Congress by issuing duties under an emergency economic law.

The suit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade in Manhattan, argues that Congress didn’t grant Trump the necessary authority to impose the tariffs and that national trade policy “now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority.”

Trump “has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the group, which includes New York, Illinois and Arizona, said in the complaint.

A spokesman for the White House criticized Democratic officials who filed the complaint for “prioritizing a witch hunt against President Trump over protecting the safety and wellbeing of their constituents.”

“The Trump Administration remains committed to using its full legal authority to confront the distinct national emergencies our country is currently facing — both the scourge of illegal migration and fentanyl flows across our border and the exploding annual U.S. goods trade deficit,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

The suit follows a handful of others — filed by California, small businesses and members of the Blackfeet Nation tribe in Montana — that all make similar claims. It seeks a court order halting the tariffs, including the worldwide levies Trump paused on April 9. The states allege the tariffs amount to a massive tax on American consumers.

“The president does not have the power to raise taxes on a whim, but that’s exactly what President Trump has been doing with these tariffs,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “Donald Trump promised that he would lower prices and ease the cost of living, but these illegal tariffs will have the exact opposite effect on American families.”

The complaint takes aim at Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which the president invoked for “the most damaging of his tariffs,” according to the suit. 

The states argue the law was passed five decades ago to prevent presidents from abusing emergency powers, and that it can only be invoked to respond to an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” Trade deficits and other issues cited by Trump don’t meet that standard, the states allege.

“The statutory requirement of an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ is not met by the president’s declaration of emergency accompanying the Worldwide Tariff Order,” the states said in the complaint. “As the Worldwide Tariff Order acknowledges, ‘annual U.S. goods trade deficits’ are ‘persistent’; thus, by definition, they are not ‘unusual and extraordinary.'”

The suit comes a day after Trump turned down his tariff rhetoric against China, the world’s second-biggest economy. Global markets are still on edge, however, given how frequently Trump has changed course on the matter.

The other states in the suit are Oregon, Colorado, Connecticut, New Mexico, Vermont, Nevada, Delaware, Minnesota and Maine.

The case is State of Oregon v. Trump, 1:25-cv-00077, US Court of International Trade (New York).

The April 15 tax filing deadline in the United States has passed. For many taxpayers, this marks a moment of relief. However, for accounting professionals, it should mark the beginning of something else: analysis, review and developing long-term improvement strategies. 

In my work with small and medium-sized businesses in Brazil — a country known for having one of the most complex tax systems in the world — I’ve learned that meeting deadlines is just one part of the process.  The real value lies in what comes next: understanding mistakes, identifying inefficiencies and seizing opportunities to improve compliance for the following year. 

This perspective is just as relevant in the U.S. According to the QuickBooks Small Business Index 2025, small businesses are under growing financial pressure: 55% of business owners reported charging more than 25% of their monthly expenses to credit cards, often without a well-structured cash flow plan. Rising interest rates have also led to an average increase of $600 per year in financing costs, reducing available hiring, technology or marketing resources. 

These financial vulnerabilities also surface in operational issues. During the 2025 tax season, users reported navigation problems on the IRS website, including difficulty locating the login button, which had been moved from its traditional top-right position. While this may seem minor, such usability issues on a critical system can contribute to stress, delays and unintentional filing errors. 

The key question is: How many technical, operational or fiscal failures could be prevented with a more strategic and preventive approach? 

My professional experience has shown that strategically reviewing financial and tax processes allows businesses to correct errors, strengthen internal controls, reduce risk and improve fiscal efficiency. 

This doesn’t require just technical knowledge. It demands a broad vision built on real-world experience, especially working closely with small companies operating under limited resources and high pressure. 

The professionals who can bridge execution with strategic thinking are becoming increasingly valuable. 

Perhaps most importantly, this approach is not exclusive to any country. Whether you’re in Brazil or the United States, what truly matters is not just filing a return but ensuring it reflects a stronger, more efficient and more sustainable business in the year ahead.