BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A St. Mary Parish tax preparer is accused in a tax fraud scheme that has cost Louisiana tax payers an estimated $55,000.
The Louisiana Department of Revenue, in a news release, said Lakesha Navy, of Baldwin, was arrested Thursday on felony charges of principal to filing or maintaining false public records and principal to illegal transmission of monetary funds and released after posting bond. It was unknown if she’s represented by an attorney.
Officials say Navy allegedly filed hundreds of state income tax returns containing fabricated business losses that improperly reduced her clients’ taxable income, leading in many cases to illegally inflated tax refunds. State tax auditors noticed a suspicious pattern with returns filed in 2014 and 2015. Investigators determined that many of her clients didn’t claim any business losses and that some did not own businesses at all.
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