{"id":457311,"date":"2026-10-05T21:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/457311\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T21:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:10:07","slug":"tax-preparer-who-filed-false-returns-gets-four-year-prison-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/457311\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax preparer who filed false returns gets four-year prison term"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has sentenced a San Antonio tax preparer to more than four years in prison for filing fraudulent deductions on clients’ tax returns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Natasha Sheree Banks Brown, 45, was sentenced to 53 months in prison by U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra on Monday. Ezra also ordered Banks-Brown to pay $3.8 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.<\/p>\n

Brown ran a business called Tasha’s Total Tax Service. Federal officials in December 2020 began investigating some of the tax returns that Brown had prepared and found they included false and fraudulent deductions and credits that significantly increased the tax refunds.<\/p>\n

Clients were not given a price quote for Banks-Brown’s services and she told them that she would take the fee out of their returns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her scheme, investigators said, included the use of tax preparation software that allowed Brown to have the refunds deposited into a bank account she controlled.<\/p>\n

She was set to be sentenced in July, but federal authorities discovered that on the day of her conviction, she filed more fraudulent documents<\/a> and she was taken back into custody.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federal public defender David Kimmelman asked Ezra to consider house arrest among other options to keep her out of prison, citing her responsibilities to her family. Ezra’s court said federal sentencing guidelines called for a punishment of 51 to 63 months in prison.<\/p>\n

Kimmelman told the court that Brown’s case has “one of the most egregious, painful histories” he had ever encountered. He said Brown grew up watching her mother do drugs and suffer physical abuse from her father, and that Brown has a history of mental health issues.<\/p>\n

When Ezra allowed Brown to address the court, she said that her family was hearing some of her history for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I tried to protect them from my past by providing them with a better life,” Brown told the court. “I had a mental break, a nervous breakdown, a serious one, and it made me attempt to take my own life.”<\/p>\n

She said that she felt she was targeted by federal authorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ezra, however, said that Brown had shown no remorse for what she did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The judge said that after Brown’s conviction, he was going to “give her a break” and allow her to remain free until her July sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Well, she wasn’t done,” Ezra said. “That same evening she’s back at it, and she did it several more times and then was brought into custody.”<\/p>\n

In addition to the prison time, Brown will have to serve one year of supervised release, and also was ordered to not engage in any activity involving tax preparation or related activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has sentenced a San Antonio tax preparer to more than four years in prison for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-457311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}