United States of America v. Felix Cordobas

Brooklyn, New York, criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with preparing false tax returns containing fictious children, fictitious solar expenses and fictitious business expenses, and related charges of wire fraud.

Felix Cordoba, age 66, of East Elmhurst, Queens, New York, for the tax years 2020 and 2021, prepared false and fraudulent Forms 1040 and associated schedules and forms for clients that contained a variety of false claims. The most common false claims involved solar energy expenses and business property sales, which were entirely fictitious and which Cordoba included on his customers’ returns. Cordoba also frequently falsely claimed that his customers took care of children that did not exist. For example, the jury saw a video of a secretly recorded interaction between Cordoba and an undercover IRS agent during which Cordoba invented a child out of thin air, turning the Spanish phrase “I don’t even know” (“ni sé”) into the name of a fake child (“Nize Guzman”) when the undercover did not offer a child’s name for Cordoba’s use.

The Defendant was found guilty on 14 counts. Based on the fraudulent returns charged in the Indictment, as well as other publicly filed Court documents but which were not specifically addressed at trial, the government expects to prove at sentencing that defendant’s conduct resulted in the filing of many thousands of false returns and a loss of more than $24 million to the IRS.