A Virginia accountant will spend the next two-plus years in prison after he was convicted of filing bogus tax returns for his business.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced Henry Omozee to 27 months in prison and one year of probation, and ordered him to pay more than $82,000 in retribution for defrauding the government through a series of phony tax returns. An Alexandria jury in August convicted Omozee of three counts of filing false tax returns.
Omozee was a certified public accountant with offices in Alexandria and Woodbridge. He popped up on federal radar screens when, as he filed returns under his brother’s name, agents noticed that he had an unusually high number of refunds coming back to his clients. When agents interviewed Omozee, he admitted that he was filing returns under his brother’s name because Omozee owed back taxes to the government.
Authorities raided Omozee’s office in late June 2004 and seized boxes of records. IRS agents discovered that he was understating his income by as much as three-fourths for his 2003 return. Agents also found other forms that changed his income for the same year; Omozee said those forms were just “samples.”
In 2002, Omozee claimed that he hadn’t made any money from his business. In fact, he had made more than $98,000, court papers allege.
Omozee didn’t file a return for 2001, even though he had made at least $25,000, the jury found.
