Friday, Dec. 9, 2022 | 5:50 p.m.
A Las Vegas man has been found guilty of filing multiple fraudulent tax returns in an attempt to obtain nearly $1 million in refunds for himself and his companies, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada.
Anthony Uvari, 57, was convicted Thursday by a federal jury on four counts of making and subscribing false tax returns.
Between February 2012 and May 2013, Uvari filed or caused to be filed four tax returns falsely claiming that multiple businesses had paid him or his companies income but withheld more than $900,000 of income tax on his behalf and paid it to the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney’s office said.
The IRS paid out more than $300,000 in fraudulently obtained refunds before discovering the nature of Uvari’s scheme and denying the remainder of his requests.
In 2011, Uvari had claimed on his individual income tax return nearly $600,000 in withholdings from winnings on horse racing wagers from off-track betting organizations — of which the IRS had no record. Two of the betting organizations were not in business at the time, and two others also had no records of the bets claimed by Uvari, the attorney’s office said.
He also filed three corporate tax returns on behalf of two shell companies he controlled, claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax withholdings from a Canadian bank — a representative of which testified during the four-day trial that it had not conducted any such financial transactions with Uvari, nor had it paid or withheld income tax on behalf of him or his companies.
In 2007-10, Uvari had filed individual income tax returns using false tax withholdings to claim fraudulent refunds, the attorney’s office said.
The case against Uvari was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Schmale and Jessic Oliva.
A sentencing hearing for Uvari has been scheduled for March 8, 2023. For each count of making and subscribing a false tax return, he faces up to three years in prison, a term of supervised release and a fine, the attorney’s office said.