Glouco man gets seven years for tax fraud

A Gloucester County tax preparer was sentenced by a federal judge yesterday to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $216,000 in restitution for filing false tax returns.

Neyembo Mikanda, 48, with addresses in Williamstown and Wilmington, was convicted last year on 26 counts, including the preparation of false income-tax returns for clients and corporate returns for his own companies.

U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman also ordered three years of supervision after Mikanda's prison release, and ordered him never to work in the tax-preparation field again.

"There's an old saying that you can steal more money with a pen than you can with a gun," Hillman told Mikanda. "You're a living embodiment of that."

The judge said he was concerned that Mikanda, who owned and operated Public Synergies Inc., a Williamstown tax-preparation firm, would commit similar frauds if given the opportunity. He said he hoped that Mikanda would spend his prison time thinking about the chaos he had caused others.

In an 11-day trial last July, a jury found that Mikanda defrauded the Internal Revenue Service by preparing fraudulent tax returns for clients. It also found that he received refunds totaling more than $250,000 by falsely claiming fuel-tax credits on his own corporate tax filings.

According to court documents, from September 2002 through April 2004, Mikanda prepared client returns that contained fabricated or inflated deductions, including those for charity gifts, job expenses, and mileage.

Numerous clients were audited and forced to pay interest, penalties, and additional tax. Mikanda kept a portion of their returns, sometimes receiving $2,500 for preparation, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Chillemi, who prosecuted Mikanda with Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Smith. Hillman ordered Mikanda to refund his clients the amount they paid in penalties and tax-prep fees.

Mikanda filed fraudulent corporate returns for Public Synergies from 1998 through 2003. False returns also were filed from 2000 through 2003 for two other companies in his name, New Jersey University College, Inc. and American Entrepreneurial Institute of Technology, Inc., according to court records.