Las Vegas-Based CPA, His Wife and
“Highly-Specialized Paralegal” Allegedly Promote Tax-Fraud Scheme
The United States has sued a Las
Vegas-based CPA and two others to stop an alleged tax-fraud scheme, the Justice
Department announced today. Named as defendants in the civil injunction suit
were CPA Wayne Reeves, Reeves’ wife, Diane Vaoga, and their alleged
co-promoter, James Stoll. The government complaint was filed last month in Las
Vegas with the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. Announcement of
the court filing was delayed until Reeves was served with court papers this
week.
The government complaint alleges
that Reeves, Vaoga and Stoll, acting through various e
ntities, sell a
sham-trust scheme that improperly reduces or eliminates customers’ reported
federal income taxes. According to the government complaint, Reeves, Vaoga and
Stoll maintain offices in Las Vegas and Wyoming, and promote their scheme to
customers throughout the United States. The suit also seeks to bar the
defendants from preparing federal income tax returns and to require them to
turn over their customer lists to the government.
According to the government
complaint, Reeves, touting his experience as a CPA, solicits customers to
participate in the defendants’ illegal income/asset sheltering scheme.
According to the complaint Stoll refers to himself as a “highly specialized
paralegal” and creates the trusts, corporations and limited-liability
partnerships needed to further the scheme. Vaoga allegedly serves as an officer
of one of the entities at issue. The government alleges that the defendants’
scheme “enables participants to illegally shelter income and to hide assets
from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) through a series of bogus entities
designed to disrupt and interfere with IRS tax assessment and collection
efforts.”
The IRS lists misuse of trusts as
one of its “Dirty Dozen” tax scams. The Justice Department
has obtained injunctions against hundreds of tax-return preparers and tax-fraud
promoters in the past decade. Information about these cases is available on the
Justice Department website.
IRS Circular 230 Disclosure
Pursuant to the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service Circular 230, we inform you that, to the extent any advice relating to a Federal tax issue is contained in this communication, including in any attachments, it was not written or intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (a) avoiding any tax related penalties that may be imposed on you or any other person under the Internal Revenue Code, or (b) promoting, marketing or recommending to another person any transaction or matter addressed in this communication.
Pursuant to the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service Circular 230, we inform you that, to the extent any advice relating to a Federal tax issue is contained in this communication, including in any attachments, it was not written or intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (a) avoiding any tax related penalties that may be imposed on you or any other person under the Internal Revenue Code, or (b) promoting, marketing or recommending to another person any transaction or matter addressed in this communication.
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