Palm Beach County woman charged with filing false tax returns

By Palm Beach Business.com

WEST PALM BEACH — A federal grand jury has charged a Palm Beach County tax preparer with 22 counts of preparing false income tax returns.

Marvel Ebanks of West Palm Beach faces a maximum of 3 years in prison on each count. She was being held pending a hearing on April 16 before Magistrate Judge Linnea R. Johnson.

The indictment alleges that Ebanks owned and operated Marvelous Enterprises Inc, a tax return preparation business located in Palm Beach County. Ebanks allegedly prepared Individual Income tax returns that provided tax refunds for her customers based on false information.

Ebanks allegedly would claim nonexistent expenses or inflated itemized deductions making it appear that the taxpayers would be due a larger tax refund than was allowed from the IRS.

The taxpayers were typically only sent the signature page of their returns and were unaware of the false information that Ebanks used to inflate their refunds.