Ultimate frisbee team; sham sale; abusive trust; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
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Denver: Four Colorado residents were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for their roles in an abusive trust tax evasion scheme that caused approximately $40 million in losses.
Marcia Predmore, Roderick Prescott, Suzanne Thompson and Weldon Wulstein promoted an illegal “layered” trust tax shelter to hundreds of high-net-worth business owners across the country. The scheme used four trusts — a business trust, family trust, charitable trust and private family foundation — to help clients evade federal income taxes on upwards of 98% of their business profits.
The defendants taught clients to claim tax deductions for non-deductible personal living expenses and fraudulent charitable contributions. Some promoters marketed the shelter at seminars nationwide, advertising that using it would allow clients to “own nothing, control everything.” The tax shelter cost between $25,000 and $50,000 to set up.
Wulstein, a CPA, prepared hundreds of false tax returns for clients who purchased the shelter, working in partnership with Thompson, who operated a bookkeeping firm and prepared financial statements for the clients’ trusts. Prescott, who had previously been convicted of tax evasion and permanently barred from promoting abusive tax shelters, promoted the private family foundation layer of the scheme.
Predmore, a registered life insurance agent, promoted the shelter through a business she operated with her spouse, Timothy McPhee. In December 2025, McPhee was sentenced to 151 months in prison for conspiracy, tax evasion and wire fraud related to his role in the scheme.
Thompson and Wulstein were each convicted on six additional counts of assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. Predmore was convicted on six counts of tax evasion for her personal use of the same shelter she sold to clients.
All four defendants face a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy charge. Thompson and Wulstein also face a maximum of three years in prison on each count of assisting in the preparation of false tax returns, while Predmore faces an additional maximum of five years in prison on each count of tax evasion.
Tallahassee, Florida: Taija Avion Smith, 25, and Jaheed Anthony Williams, 24, both of Tallahassee, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail theft, theft of a mail key, bank fraud conspiracy and multiple counts of aggravated identity theft. Williams also pleaded guilty to 14 counts of bank fraud.
Between March 11, 2021, and May 21, 2024, Smith was employed by the U.S. Postal Service in Tallahassee. Due to her employment, Smith had access to a postal key, which she stole and gave to her co-defendant, Williams. Together, Smith and Williams conspired to steal U.S. mail, which included stealing mailed checks that they fraudulently deposited in financial institutions and then split the proceeds.
Smith and Williams face up to five years in prison on the conspiracy to commit mail theft count; up to 10 years on the unlawful possession or theft of a mail key; up to 30 years on the bank fraud conspiracy count; and a mandatory consecutive term of two years for each of the aggravated identity theft counts. Williams also faces up to five years in prison on the theft of mail count and up to 30 years for each bank fraud count.
Smith’s sentencing is scheduled for July 14. Williams’ sentencing is scheduled for August 10.
Calabasas, California: A Calabasas man was sentenced to 27 months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion on more than $4 million, operating an illegal gambling business and money laundering.
Jason Noah Feinman was caught operating an unlicensed and illegal gambling website.
Feinman laundered the money he made from the illegal gambling website by exchanging it for checks made out to him from one of his businesses. Between May 18, 2018, and Jan. 2, 2024, Feinman gave a customer more than $1.5 million in cash, which was transferred back to him in the form of 18 checks, which equaled the same amount. During the extent of his crimes, Feinman exchanged roughly $1.5 million to $3.5 million in cash for checks.
Portland, Oregon: More than a year after he was arrested by the FBI and indicted in April 2025 on 23 felony charges — including wire fraud, identity theft and tax evasion for defrauding federal pandemic-era programs — Jacksonville, Oregon, contractor Joel Matthew Caswell, 31, pleaded guilty to one-third of the charges he originally faced.
Caswell’s arrest came after a multiyear investigation following fraudulent applications for pandemic era funds intended to assist small businesses. In addition, other financial dealings included providing fraudulent information on financial applications and failure to pay required taxes and other fees associated with employees for his numerous business holdings.
Caswell has ownership and managing interests in multiple logging and construction businesses that collectively employed approximately 40 employees.
In addition to charges related to his commercial entities, Caswell, who previously owned the Portland Nitro ultimate frisbee team, was also determined to have used about $70,000 of the federal funds he received to rent Providence Park in Portland for the team’s home games. Former players have alleged they weren’t getting paid and were forced to pay for their own hotel rooms and other play-related expenses.
Brookline, Massachusetts: A former Brookline physician has been sentenced to 58 months in prison for healthcare fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
Pankaj Merchia, 52, was convicted in January on multiple counts stemming from two fraud schemes. In the first, Merchia billed insurance companies for monthly rentals of CPAP and BiPAP machines for patients he had not treated since at least 2011. In the second, he defrauded an insurance company out of more than $390,000 by submitting claims for a CPAP machine provided to his brother through a newly created medical business after being told the insurer would not cover treatment rendered by a family member.
Merchia also failed to report more than $6.5 million in income from his medical businesses between 2009 and 2019 by fabricating a sham sale of those businesses to a co-conspirator. He was ordered to pay $1,847,931 in restitution.
Atlanta: Festus Anyiam, 41, of Norcross, Georgia, was convicted of stealing government funds and laundering the proceeds of fraudulent tax refunds obtained through identity theft.
In 2015, the IRS received fraudulent tax returns claiming refunds that used the personally identifiable information of taxpayers in Illinois and Missouri. The returns directed the IRS to send the refund payments to a third-party tax preparation software company, which deposited the tax refunds into prepaid debit cards that had been activated using taxpayers’ stolen PII. After the debit cards were loaded with refund payments, the debit cards were used to purchase money orders from various retail stores in the Atlanta area.
During a three-week period in June and July 2015, Anyiam used ATMs throughout the Atlanta area to deposit hundreds of those money orders into his personal bank account. To conceal the true source of the funds, Anyiam later sought to clear the tax refund proceeds from his bank account by buying a cashier’s check for $406,000 and depositing it at another bank.
Anyiam was found guilty of four counts of theft of government funds and one count of money laundering. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 10.
Bridgeport, Connecticut: A Shelton woman who worked as CFO of a Danbury software company has pleaded guilty to defrauding the unnamed company of more than $739,000.
Pamela Aguilar, 65, pleaded guilty to an offense stemming from embezzling the funds.
Aguilar pleaded guilty to wire fraud, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years.
Between approximately 2018 and 2025, Aguilar defrauded the company by making ACH and wire transfers from its account to personal bank accounts, writing checks and making cash withdrawals from the company account, and by making PayPal and credit card payments from the company’s account for her own benefit.
Through this scheme, Aguila stole more than $739,466.44 from the company. She attempted to cover up her criminal behavior by providing false weekly cash reports and false monthly financial statements to the company’s CEO.
Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 27.
San Diego: Oladapo Olagbemi, a longtime CPA, pleaded guilty to filing more than a thousand false income tax returns on behalf of clients that resulted in more than $5 million in improper deductions and credits.
Olagbemi, who managed San Diego-based D.A.O. Accounting, Consulting, and Taxation, pleaded guilty to four counts of aiding and assisting the preparation of false tax returns. Olagbemi admitted to multiple schemes between tax years 2019 and 2023 to help clients get illegitimate refunds by claiming business expenses, charitable gifts and energy credits to which the taxpayers were not entitled.
Olagbemi prepared false Schedules 1, C, and E accompanying his client’s individual income tax returns between at least 2020 and 2023. He prepared returns that reported false business losses totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taxpayer clients had no such reportable business, and the expenses he claimed for them were non-deductible personal expenses.
Another of Olagbemi’s schemes was preparing false Forms 2106 to accompany taxpayers’ Form 1040 returns. On this form, Olagbemi advised and presented to the IRS purported business expenses and resulting decreases in taxable income, even though he knew the taxpayer was not permitted to use the 2106 form because they were not a fee-based state or local government official.
Olagbemi is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug, 28.
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