A West Hartford man accused of stealing thousands from the IRS through falsely individual income-tax returns will spend 10 days in prison, authorities say.
New Haven federal Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer also sentenced Hai T. Le, 44, to three years of supervised release and ordered him to repay the Internal Revenue Service about $30,000 still outstanding of the $106,074 he collected through fraudulent refunds, the IRS and Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday.
Le pleaded guilty last April to three counts of filing a false claim with the IRS.
According to investigators, Le prepared income-tax returns for various clients. However, unknown to them was that he later would filed amended federal returns that claimed the clients were due refunds, which he had the IRS send to his home address.
Between March and August 2010, Le prepared and filed 28 fraudulent amended returns that totaled $138,826 in refunds. The IRS intervened before $32,752 of refunds could be processed and mailed to Le, limiting taxpayers’ actual out-of-pocket loss, investigators said.
