Former IRS employee sentenced for tax evasion

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A former Internal Revenue Service employee who lives in Columbia has pleaded guilty to multiple tax fraud charges, according to an announcement from United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero and Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

Wayne Garvin, 57, was sentenced to 13 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $74,662 restitution for filing false tax returns and providing fabricated records to the IRS in an attempt to obstruct an audit of those returns. Garvin pleaded guilty in March.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Garvin was a long-time IRS employee who most recently worked with theTaxpayer Advocate Service in Philadelphia.

For the years 2012 through 2016, while working as an IRS employee, Garvin prepared and filed tax returns on which he claimed false deductions and expenses associated with rental properties, fictitious real estate taxes on his personal residence and fabricated charitable contributions.

The U.S. Attorney said Garvin also deducted nearly $16,000 in false expenses associated with his employment with the U.S. Army Reserves on his 2013 tax return. Although Garvin was formerly in the Reserves, he did not perform any reservist duty in 2013 and was not entitled to deduct any expenses related to that employment. In total, the U.S. Attorney said Garvin caused a loss to the IRS of more than $74,000.

Further, court documents also show that after the IRS began an audit of Garvin’s 2013 and 2014 tax returns, he attempted to obstruct the audit by submitting fictitious documents to the IRS. For example, to justify the false deductions and expenses on his tax returns, Garvin fabricated and submitted receipts from a church, invoices from a contractor and a letter from the Department of the Army.

After learning he was under criminal investigation, Garvin later submitted some of the same fraudulent documents to IRS-Criminal Investigation.

The case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiwana Wright and Trial Attorney Melissa S. Siskind of the Department of Justice Tax Division.