Newport News tax preparer gets 27 months in filing scam

NEWPORT NEWS — A Newport News income tax preparer was sentenced Monday to just over two years in prison following allegations that she filed more than 400 false tax returns on behalf of her clients.

Angela C. Harper, 52, bilked the federal government out of $726,000 through the fraudulent returns, court filings said. She pleaded guilty last summer to one count of tax fraud, with 34 additional counts dropped as part of a plea deal.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson sentenced Harper to two years and three months. That was three months shy of what prosecutors wanted, but significantly more than the home confinement and probation that her attorney had sought.

Harper is married to Vernon E. Green, 38, who is accused of killing Newport News police officer Katie Thyne a year ago.

Harper previously told the Daily Press that she met Green when she prepared his taxes in 2015.

According to court documents, Harper ran At Ease Tax Services out of her Newport News home and local hotel rooms between 2014 and 2018.

As part of the plea agreement, Harper admitted that she filed 35 false tax returns to the IRS in order to inflate her clients’ tax refunds. (The “more than 400” false returns and $726,000 in losses came from a pre-sentence report filed with the court).

She listed false credits and deductions for education, medical care expenses, child care expenses, residential energy payments and charitable donations, according to a statement of facts agreed to as part of the plea agreement.

In one case, the statement said, Harper falsely reported that a client ran a child care business that brought in up to $9,000 a year, allowing that client to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit.

She falsely reported that another man had paid $8,000 in dependent care expenses to a nonexistent person, and falsely boosted another’s man’s charitable contributions and employee expenses by over $40,000.

Harper typically charged $1,000 to do someone’s taxes. But she didn’t sign the documents, the statement said, making it appear the taxpayer had filed them directly to the IRS.

Prosecutors say many of Harper’s clients have been negatively impacted.

One woman paid Harper $2,000 in tax fees over two years for the filings, but has been told by the IRS that she now owes another $2,495. Another couple was hit with nearly $3,300 in penalties and interest for false education credits.

“These people are by no means wealthy, and having to pay a significant amount in back taxes is a hardship, especially after paying high fees to Harper,” prosecutors wrote in sentencing documents.

Harper benefited from the fraud with increased business, prosecutors said, saying she “continued filing false returns” even after an IRS agent told her in 2017 that she was being investigated.

But Harper’s lawyer, Fernando Groene, sought to spread the responsibility, saying her clients “were not innocent players” who were “duped by the tax man.”

“Her ‘clients’ were knowing participants who were advised and agreed to seeking the maximum amount of tax refund or credit possible and did not complain,” Groene wrote in a sentencing paper.

The fee structure — in which Harper got a percentage of the refund — was “illegal at its core,” raising “all kinds of red flags.” But “since everyone benefited from ... their mutual scam,” no one complained.

Only when the IRS began asking questions, Groene added, did the taxpayers begin to point the finger at Harper. “The defendant accepts her criminal responsibility,” he wrote. “She just indicates that her clients were all aware of her fraudulent claims of their behalf.”

Groene also contended that Harper had a difficult life, suffering from childhood abuse and physical and emotional turmoil.

Her father died when she was 12, Groene said, and her mother backed away, leaving Harper to raise herself and her brother. She got married at age 18 to a 51-year-old man, having three children with him, Groene said. Though she got heavily into drugs and alcohol, he said, she always worked hard at various jobs.

Harper’ s daughter, TaShara Harper, asked the judge for leniency, saying her mother is a hard worker who learned sign language in order to communicate with another daughter.

“I’ve witnessed my mother struggle all of my life, but I have never seen her give up,” TaShara wrote. “Many times as a child ... I watched my mom go to sleep hungry just to make sure that her children had enough to eat.”

She said she’s seen her mother “walk miles to and from work every day for many years,” in all kinds of weather to “keep food on the table.”

“She’s my backbone, my right hand, my thought process when I can’t comprehend certain things,” she added. “She’s my everything, and without her I’m lost. I’m begging for your leniency, your honor!”

Groene asked for probation under a “solutions focused” approach to help Harper deal with anxiety and depression.

But Hudson opted for 27 months behind bars, and also ordered Harper to pay $10,700 in restitution. He ordered her to report to federal prison by Feb. 4.