{"id":59027,"date":"2025-11-18T19:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T19:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/59027\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T19:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T19:57:09","slug":"18-months-in-prison-for-tax-preparer-in-massive-fraud-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/59027\/","title":{"rendered":"18 months in prison for tax preparer in massive fraud case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 Bakersfield tax preparer Victor Cruz has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his involvement in a massive tax fraud scheme.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz helped prepare and file more than 500 fraudulent tax returns that claimed $25 million in refunds.<\/p>\n<p>He worked with Miguel Martinez, who created fake businesses and reported phony wages to the IRS.<\/p>\n<p>The scheme ran from 2019 to 2023, and the IRS paid out $2.3 million before catching the fraud.<\/p>\n<p>Martinez, who led the operation, was sentenced to six years in prison last September.<\/p>\n<p>This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>Stay in Touch with Us Anytime, Anywhere:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 Bakersfield tax preparer Victor Cruz has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,155,153,152,35963,35967,35968,35964,162,35965,35969,35966],"class_list":["post-59027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-downtown","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-bakersfield-tax-fraud","tag-fake-businesses","tag-fraudulent-tax-returns","tag-irs-fraud","tag-kern-county-news","tag-miguel-martinez","tag-phony-wages","tag-victor-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}