Ringleader of Tax Prep Services in Michigan, ANNETTA POWELL, Could Not Even Get Credentials to Prepare the Proven False Returns
So . . .
She Got Somone Else to Get the EFIN So She Could Still Run Network Despite Criminal Past: IRS
By JOSH MITCHELL
Editor
River Mississippi News
DETROIT, MI VIA MISSISSIPPI REPORTING SITE — A woman named Annetta Powell and her seven tax firms are forever barred in the United States from providing these financial services for consumers, a federal court in Detroit has ruled.
Those U.S. forbidden firms connected to Powell are:
Alliance Tax Services Inc.; Nationwide Tax Services Inc.; Tax Expert Stores Inc.; United Tax Services Inc.; Top Financial Specialists Inc.; United Financial Team Corporation; and Speedy Tax Stores Corporation.
Powell and those now-shuttered tax businesses must return hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United States of America, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a news release Friday.
In total, Powell and the tax-service outlets tied to her in the federal court ruling must return a total of more than $689,000, U.S. justice authorities announced in the public release.
The actions committed by Powell and her Detroit tax storefronts were improper under U.S. code, and the defendants obtained “ill-gotten” gains, officials said. Tax returns were fraudulently prepared in 2019 and 2021, and clients of Powell and the businesses received the “ill-gotten gains,” the release adds.
The order barring Powell and her tax firms from doing tax work in the United States comes after a 12-day trial in Detroit that started in 2023 and ended in January.
The order from U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith for the Eastern District of Michigan says the fraudulent returns from Powell and her firms were “widespread” and that the IRS violations were “routine.”
Up to five of the tax outlets were deemed “preparation stores” and were in Detroit, Pontiac and Flint. The initial named used was “The Tax Experts” and later “Speedy Tax Stores,” the news release adds.
The fraudulent returns delivered by Powell’s collection of tax storefronts caused “severe” and far-reaching harm, it adds.
Evidence presented during the federal adjudication of this case compellingly demonstrated to the court that the actions of Powell and the tax storefronts were far too frequent to be considered “random.”
And on top of that, the court further concluded through the review of the investigation into Powell that she “refused to cooperate with the IRS investigation” and actually worked “thwart” it.
DOJ officials said Powell committed this uncooperative interference by “altering customers’ files and returns and manipulating the use of an Electronic Filing Identification Number (EFIN), which is a number assigned to a taxpayer that the IRS uses to monitor the returns preparers submit.”
To make matters worse, Powell could not even get her own EFIN due to her list of personal legal problems in the nationwide criminal database. Thus, the very stores she improperly oversaw without the required filing number were allowed to operate based on an EFIN obtained in someone else’s name, according to the press release.
With the multiple layers of deceit and fraud in this case, the court decided an apparent permanent eviction from the tax-storefront operating business was the only likely scenario that would exercise justice in this case as any other option would very likely lead to Powell continuing a similar pattern of fraudulent conduct sometime into the future.
It was an IRS investigation.
