A Tallahassee man has been sentenced to three and a half years in federal prison after filing dozens of false tax claims that sought more than $4.3 million in refunds from the Internal Revenue Service, federal prosecutors said.
Source: Tallahassee Democrat via Coral Springs News
Jonquaris Richardson, 27, filed 46 false claims with the IRS between September 2022 and September 2023, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Florida. The sentence — 42 months in federal prison — was announced on November 13, 2026.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
Prosecutors said Richardson sought the refunds through claims for Employee Retention Credits and Sick and Family Leave Credits — pandemic-era tax benefits intended to assist businesses.
Federal authorities said Richardson claimed to employ workers through two businesses: A+ Garage Service Inc. and A+ Garage Services LLC, which purportedly provided garage door installation and servicing. Records show he submitted fraudulent quarterly employment tax returns and amended returns seeking the refunds, according to the release.
Richardson ultimately received six U.S. Treasury checks totaling $227,874 in fraudulent refunds, according to the release — a fraction of the $4,326,885 he sought, but enough, once the claims were unravelled, to send the case to federal court in Florida's Northern District.
From a 46-count indictment to a prison sentence
When the U.S. Attorney's Office first announced the case, Richardson was indicted in federal court on 46 counts of false claims against the United States through fraudulent federal tax forms — one count for each claim. At indictment, prosecutors noted each count carried up to five years in prison, and that an indictment is an allegation, not evidence of guilt.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, the IRS's law-enforcement arm, which investigates tax fraud and other financial crimes. Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin M. Keen prosecuted the case, according to the Justice Department.
The prosecution is part of the Justice Department's effort to combat fraud against federal programs, prosecutors said — the same enforcement push that has produced a series of cases over pandemic-era credits claimed by businesses that did not qualify for them.
Background: the pandemic credits at the centre of the case
The Employee Retention Credit was a pandemic-era payroll tax credit created to encourage employers to keep workers on the payroll during the COVID-19 disruption, while the Sick and Family Leave Credits reimbursed certain employers for paid leave. Because both programs paid out through the tax system — including by refund — they became a target for false claims filed with fabricated payroll records, and the IRS and Justice Department have spent years working through those cases.
For legitimate small-business owners — including the many Punjabi and South Asian garage, trucking and service businesses in Florida and across the United States that filed real pandemic-era claims — cases like this one are the other side of that story: every fraudulent claim invited the extra scrutiny that slowed honest filings, and prosecutors say the money Richardson received was taxpayer money paid out on returns that should never have been filed.
What happens next: Richardson will serve his 42-month sentence in the federal prison system. The sentencing release reviewed did not announce a restitution figure. The Justice Department says its work against fraud on federal programs, including pandemic-era tax credits, is continuing.