Floral Park man gets 2 years in prison for tax fraud

Noah Manskar
The Buffalo federal courthouse in 2011. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

A federal judge sentenced a Floral Park accountant to two years in prison Wednesday for buying and selling kids’ personal information to get his clients tax refunds they didn’t deserve.

David Menzies, 51, was also ordered to pay nearly $281,000 in restitution as part of his sentence, which U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo handed down in Buffalo.

Menzies pleaded guilty in April to a felony tax fraud charge after admitting to falsifying hundreds of tax returns from January 2010 to April 2015 — all while failing to file his own tax returns on time.

“This is serious stuff,” Vilardo said in court Wednesday, according to the Buffalo News. “This type of fraud affects taxpayers who pay their taxes.”

Menzies claimed false business expenses and income and fake dependents for his clients, federal authorities said in a news release.

He also solicited the personal information of minors from their parents, sometimes paying to use it on his clients’ returns — for which he charged $250 extra, authorities said.

In one instance, court filings say, a client’s 2011 tax return falsely listed a dependent and said the client earned $15,000 from selling Avon products, even though the person never sold them.

Menzies tried to hide that he was preparing the tax returns by getting other people to get federal identification numbers as tax preparers and filing returns under their names, the news release said.

He also enlisted others in filing the returns and escorting his clients to cash their refund checks and collect his fees immediately afterward, authorities said.

Menzies’ crimes cost the federal government more than $250,000, according to court filings.

As he committed the crimes, Menzies failed to file his own federal tax returns on time for the years 2009 through 2015, court papers say.

“It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s not something I’ll do again,” Menzies said in court, the Buffalo News reported.

Vincent Bianco, Menzies’ Mineola-based lawyer, could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

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