Financial conquest; getting plastered; Bill of Information; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
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New Orleans: Amanda Wilkerson, 57, a resident of Marrero, Louisiana, pleaded guilty to a bill of information charging her with one count of failure to pay over payroll/trust fund taxes, one count of failure to file her individual income tax return and one count of providing false statements on a Paycheck Protection Program loan application.
Wilkerson owned and operated Divine Purpose Home Care LLC, a home healthcare business. Beginning in or about 2017 through December 2024, Wilkerson withheld taxes from her employees’ paychecks, including federal income taxes, Medicare and Social Security taxes. Wilkerson then failed to properly report Divine’s trust fund taxes and failed to remit $57,000 to the IRS, which represented the trust fund taxes she withheld from her employees’ wages in the third quarter of 2023.
In 2023, Wilkerson earned over $1.6 million of income but failed to file her 2023 individual income tax return. Also, in February 2021, she made materially false and fraudulent statements to the Small Business Administration on her PPP loan application. In her application, Wilkerson stated that a non-operational business she established in 2016 had annual gross income of $75,639 in 2019. To support her false PPP application, Wilkerson submitted a fraudulent IRS individual tax return that falsely reported that the non-operational business had gross income of $75,639.
Wilkerson knew that the business was never operational and did not have gross annual earnings of $75,639 and that the IRS Form 1040 Schedule C she submitted in support of the loan application was a false document, resulting in her receipt of an SBA-backed PPP loan in the amount of approximately $19,907.
Wilkerson faces a possible maximum sentence of 11 years in prison, up to a $600,000 fine, up to three years of supervised release and payment of a mandatory $250 special assessment fee. Wilkerson also may be ordered to pay restitution.
Castaic, California: A California tax preparer pleaded guilty to filing fraudulent federal income tax returns on behalf of clients and submitting false applications for COVID-19 pandemic relief loans.
Kerwin Aldric Jordan, 71, of Castaic, and formerly of Pebble Beach, entered guilty pleas to four counts of aiding in the preparation of false federal income tax returns and one count of wire fraud.
Jordan was the president of The Jordan Corporation, a tax preparation business, and also owned and operated a firm called Jordan and Jordan A Financial Conquest. He held himself out to clients as a tax attorney and CPA — credentials he did not actually hold.
Salt Lake City: An HVAC business owner was convicted of 11 felonies after being accused of consistently underreporting workers’ wages and hours for a period of five years.
Wayne Margetts, 63, was found guilty of 11 felonies: five counts of tax evasion, five counts of rendering a false tax return and one count of pattern of unlawful behavior. These charges were related to tax filings Margetts made for 2014 through 2018.
Margetts is the owner of a Tooele County-based HVAC business. He hid more than $780,000 in employee wages from the Utah State Tax Commission.
He underreported employees’ hours by reporting that the majority of his employees were working part-time. In reality, they were working 40 hours a week. He manipulated wage rates to show that he was paying a lower wage, when he was actually cutting them checks for a higher hourly rate.
Utah law requires employers to withhold state income tax from employee wages and send those withholdings to the Tax Commission each quarter, and Margetts failed to meet that obligation for five years. This translated to $20,000 in unpaid withholding tax and an estimated $25,000 in interest and penalties owed to the state.
Margetts sentencing is scheduled for June 4.
Sarasota, Florida: Two Orlando residents have been sentenced in a federal construction payroll fraud case that cost the IRS more than $37 million in unpaid payroll taxes.
Rene Mauricio Escobar, 55, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, while Juana Nelida Escobar, 36, was sentenced to two years in prison.
The defendants were ordered to pay $37,174,388 in restitution to the IRS.
The couple conspired to commit tax fraud and wire fraud through their company, Escobar Plastering. The scheme ran from about December 2015 through August 2024.
The defendants helped construction subcontractors pay workers off the books to avoid payroll taxes and workers’ comp insurance premiums. The scheme facilitated the employment of workers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States.
EP entered into agreements with hundreds of subcontractors. In exchange for 7% to 8% of payroll, the company sent certificates of insurance to contractors, representing that the subcontractors worked for EP and were covered by its workers’ comp insurance.
The company’s insurance policies were based on applications that claimed only a small number of employees and minimal payroll. Insurers allegedly covered hundreds of workers without knowing the true size of the payroll exposure. If insurers had known the actual amount of payroll involved, they would have charged about $14.9 million in annual premiums.
Thousands of payroll checks totaling about $148.8 million were deposited into EP bank accounts. The defendants allegedly withdrew cash to pay workers after subtracting their fee, all without withholding or paying payroll taxes to the IRS.
Federal authorities said the scheme caused the U.S. Treasury to lose $37,174,388 in unpaid payroll taxes.
Juana Escobar pleaded guilty on July 8, 2025. Rene Escobar pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2025.
San Luis Obispo, California: A former executive of a small business in Atascadero was sentenced for stealing more than $480,000 from the company over four and a half years.
Paso Robles resident Robert Conrad Vasquez, 38, was convicted of embezzling the money from Scott O’Brien Fire and Safety while acting as the company’s chief financial officer between 2019 and 2023.
Vasquez pilfered company funds for exorbitant expenditures, including fine dining and vacations, as well as his rent and credit card payments.
The full amount stolen is still under investigation, but estimated it is between $400,000 and $600,000.
Vasquez was sentenced to four years and four months in jail.
Tampa, Florida: Gilmar Pereira Da Silva, Jr. has been sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for filing a false tax return. The court also ordered Pereira Da Silva to pay $103,646 in restitution to the U.S. Treasury associated with false IRS Forms 1040 filed by him for tax years 2019 and 2020.
Pereira Da Silva filed a false Form 1040 tax return with the IRS for tax year 2021, wherein he claimed a refund of taxes in the amount of $3,413,844, based upon fake claimed fuel tax credits to which he was not entitled. The 2021 Form 1040 was not processed by the IRS. Previously, Pereira Da Silva had likewise filed false Forms 1040 for tax years 2019 and 2020, claiming refunds in the amount of approximately $20,699 and $82,947, which were largely based upon fake fuel tax credits. Those false 2019 and 2020 Forms 1040 were processed by the IRS, and the resulting refunds were paid into accounts controlled by Pereira Da Silva.
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