SC man who worked for IRS used fake tax returns to get $75K in scam, prosecutor says

A Columbia man is going to prison for scamming the government out of thousands of dollars with false tax returns he filed when he worked for the IRS, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Thursday.

Wayne Garvin, 57, was sentenced to 13 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release for filing false tax returns and providing fabricated records to the IRS in an attempt to obstruct an audit of those returns, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

Garvin pleaded guilty to multiple tax fraud charges in March, according to U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero and Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. He was originally charged with three counts of tax evasion and two counts of corruptly endeavoring to impair and impede the due administration of the internal revenue laws, according to the Justice Department.

Currently a South Carolina resident, the a 26-year veteran of the IRS conducted his scheme while working as a Supervisory Associate Advocate with the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service in Philadelphia, according to the release. Garvin went to Bowman High School and Voorhees College in the Palmetto State, according to his Facebook page.

From 2012-2016, when he worked for the IRS, Garvin prepared and filed with the IRS personal income tax returns on which he claimed false deductions and expenses associated with rental properties, fictitious real estate taxes on his personal residence, and fabricated charitable contributions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

On his 2013 tax return, Garvin deducted nearly $16,000 in false expenses associated with his employment with the U.S. Army Reserves, according to the release. Although Garvin was formerly a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, he didn’t perform any reservist duty in 2013 and was not entitled to deduct any expenses related to that employment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

In total, Garvin caused the IRS to lose more than $74,000, according to the U.S. Attorney.

Information about why the IRS decided to audit its long-time employee was not available. Garvin retired from the IRS in 2016 and moved to South Carolina, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Court documents showed that after the IRS began an audit of Garvin’s 2013 and 2014 tax returns, he tried to obstruct the audit by submitting fictitious documents to the IRS.

To justify the false deductions and expenses on his tax returns, Garvin fabricated and submitted to IRS auditors receipts from a church, invoices from a contractor and a letter from the Department of the Army, according to the release. After learning he was under criminal investigation, Garvin later submitted some of the same fraudulent documents to IRS-Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

“All of these documents were false and fraudulent,” Melissa S. Siskind of the Justice Department’s Tax Division said in court in March, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “They were created by the defendant and provided to the IRS in an attempt to avoid the assessment.”

Garvin faced a maximum punishment of five years in prison.

In addition to his prison sentence, Garvin was ordered to pay $74,662 restitution, according to the release.