Tax scheme lands EDC woman in prison

An El Dorado Hills woman is going to prison for two years for filing false IRS claims.

Sherry Taggart, 57, was also ordered to pay $757,412. She had pleaded guilty to multiple charges in September.

According to court documents, in 2010 Taggart joined a scheme initiated in 2008 and operated by her co-conspirator Barbara Antonucci, an unlicensed tax preparer, to obtain false refunds by preparing and filing false claims on behalf of clients with the IRS. The two filed hundreds of false claims with the IRS between June 2012 and March 2014, seeking refunds totaling approximately $1.4 million.

As a result, the IRS issued more than $757,000 in illegitimate refunds. In total, including the period in which Antonucci operated the scheme by herself, the IRS issued more than $1.8 million in illegitimate refunds from more than $2.5 million illegitimate claims filed by the duo.

Antonucci was sentenced on Dec. 2 to three and a half years in prison.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report