Crime & Safety

Ex-Costa Mesa Tax Preparer Gets 30 Months for Falsifying Returns

Accolades from Ronald Vernon Strawn's clients spurred him on, said his lawyer.

A tax preparer formerly based in Costa Mesa with an extensive client list of those in the legal, technological, real estate and sales fields was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for falsifying tax returns.

U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney also ordered Ronald Vernon Strawn, 69, to pay restitution of $1,992,244 to the Internal Revenue Service and spend one year on supervised release following his prison term., according to a news release from the IRS’s criminal investigative office.

In July 2013, Strawn had pleaded guilty to three counts of assisting in the preparation of fraudulent tax returns from 2005 and 2006. He’s been in custody ever since his arrest in Arizona in 2012, according to the IRS.

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In paperwork filed by a federal public defender, Strawn’s life history is described with one sorrowful event after another, including the death of his father, an unstable, drug-addicted mother who would have sex for drugs, a sister who ran away, a first wife who died and many other tribulations.

It is in his tax preparation business that he finally found the validation he sought, Strawn’s lawyer wrote.

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“After receiving accolades from clients, referrals, and opening additional offices based on his advice, Mr. Strawn let the praise go to his head and continued to promote this tax strategy” of falsifying Schedule E forms on federal tax returns.

Now that the law has caught up to him, Strawn’s back luck has returned, his lawyer wrote.

“And Mr. Strawn went from being a popular tax preparer to now realizing that if he ‘died today, no one would come to my funeral.’”


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