A Queens tax preparer was convicted on all 14 counts in federal court in Brooklyn for preparing false tax returns containing fictitious children, fictitious solar expenses and fictitious business expenses, and related wire-fraud charges, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced. Felix Cordoba, 66, of East Elmhurst, Queens, was convicted after a three-day trial before U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon. When sentenced, Cordoba faces up to 20 years in prison and financial penalties.

As proved at trial, for the tax years 2020 and 2021 Cordoba prepared false and fraudulent Forms 1040 and associated schedules for clients at his East Elmhurst business, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The most common false claims involved solar energy expenses and business property sales that were entirely fictitious. Cordoba also frequently falsely claimed that his customers took care of children that did not exist. The jury saw a video of a secretly recorded interaction with an undercover IRS agent in which Cordoba invented a child, turning the Spanish phrase 'I don't even know' ('ni sé') into the name of a fake child ('Nize Guzman') when the undercover agent did not offer a child's name, prosecutors said.

Based on the fraudulent returns charged in the indictment, and other publicly filed court documents not specifically addressed at trial, the government expects to prove at sentencing that Cordoba's conduct resulted in the filing of many thousands of false returns and a loss of more than $24 million to the IRS — yaani about 2.4 crore dollars — the U.S. Attorney's Office said. That sentencing-stage figure is the government's expectation, not a finding made by the jury at trial.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. said: 'The defendant turned his tax preparer office into a fraud machine. He added lie after lie into his clients' tax returns, pretending that his clients cared for children that didn't exist, installed solar panels that were never purchased and incurred expenses that were invented out of whole cloth. These false statements caused the IRS to issue unjustified refunds, resulting in large losses to the government.' Harry T. Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation in New York, said criminal tax enforcement is an agency priority and IRS-CI agents will continue investigating violations of the Internal Revenue Code.

The government's case is being handled by the office's General Crimes Section, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Bristow and Andrew Stamboulidis in charge of the prosecution. The docket is E.D.N.Y. 26-CR-27 (CBA). Sources: U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York (Oct. 22, 2026); WiseVoter summary of the verdict (Oct. 21-22, 2026).